A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014

Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014

A collaboration of the Kansas Historical Foundation and the Department of History at Kansas State University A Show of Patriotism

German American Farmers, Marion County, June 9, 1918.

When the United States formally declared war against Onaga. There are enough patriotic citizens of the neighborhood Germany on April 6, 1917, many Americans believed that the to enforce the order and they promise to do it." Wamego mayor war involved both the battlefield in Europe and a fight against Floyd Funnell declared, "We can't hope to change the heart of disloyal German Americans at home. Zealous patriots who the Hun but we can and will change his actions and his words." considered German Americans to be enemy sympathizers, Like-minded Kansans circulated petitions to protest schools that spies, or slackers demanded proof that immigrants were “100 offered German language classes and churches that delivered percent American.” Across the country, but especially in the sermons in German, while less peaceful protestors threatened Midwest, where many German settlers had formed close- accused enemy aliens with mob violence. In 1918 in Marion knit communities, the public pressured schools, colleges, and County, home to a thriving Mennonite community, this group churches to discontinue the use of the German language. Local of German American farmers posed before their tractor and newspapers published the names of "disloyalists" and listed threshing machinery with a large American flag in an attempt their offenses: speaking German, neglecting to donate to the to prove their patriotism with a public display of loyalty. In Red Cross, declining to buy liberty bonds, resisting the draft, the midst of a nationwide backlash against their heritage and or refusing to fly an American flag. KansasA City Star article culture, these farmers might not have been responding to a published on June 9, 1918, warned German Americans in the specific threat, but it may not have been a coincidence that the small Pottawatomie County town of Onaga that "word has gone nearby Mennonite-affiliated Tabor College was burned to the out the German language is not to be spoken on the streets of ground in April 1918. Kansas History A Journal of the Central Plains Volume 37, Number 3 | Autumn 2014

Suzanne E. Orr Language and Loyalty: 130 Interim Managing Editor The First World War and German Instruction at Two Kansas Schools Virgil W. Dean Consulting Editor by Justine Greve

Derek S. Hoff Book Review Editor Microcosm of Manhood: 148 Katherine Goerl p. 130 Abilene, Eisenhower, and Daniel T. Gresham Editorial Assistants Nineteenth-Century Male Identity by Peter M. Nadeau

Editorial Advisory Board Thomas Fox Averill Donald L. Fixico The Early Life and 164 Kenneth M. Hamilton David A. Haury Career of Topeka’s M.H. Hoeflich Thomas D. Isern p. 148 Mike Torrez, 1946–1978: James N. Leiker Bonnie Lynn-Sherow Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Patricia A. Michaelis Jay M. Price Life in Kansas Pamela Riney-Kehrberg by Jorge Iber Kim Carey Warren

Cover: “Mike Torrez,” Courtesy of the Oakland Athletics. Back Cover: Under Moonlight in Missouri: 180 "Fire on the Hill," Private John Benton Hart’s Account Watercolor by Samuel J. p. 164 Reader. of Price’s Raid, October 1864 edited by John Hart

Printed by Allen Press, Book Notes 207 Lawrence, Kansas. p. 180 Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 37 (Autumn 2014): 130–147

130 Kansas History Language and Loyalty: The First World War and German Instruction at Two Kansas Schools

by Justine Greve

wave of patriotism broke across the country when the United States entered the First World War in April 1917. In addition to joining the Red Cross, buying liberty bonds, or planting victory gardens, some citizens asserted their patriotism by burning German books, removing German composers from symphony programs, and re-naming Rubella “liberty measles.”1 The anti-German sentiment also had a more violent side. Those deemed “too German” faced ridicule, threats, accusations of disloyalty or espionage, and sometimes physical harm. In responseA to such attitudes many German immigrants made efforts to Americanize. Many stopped speaking German both in public and at home. Teaching or learning German as a second language could also raise suspicions, and this wartime anti-Germanism had a devastating effect on German language and literature departments in American colleges and universities. Scholars such as Frederick Luebke, LaVern Rippley, Don Tolzman, and Carl Wittke have detailed the harsh treatment of German Americans during World War I without much attention to the way university foreign language programs handled the new Germanophobia.2 Post-secondary institutions were not as likely to ban the “Hun language” as elementary or high schools, but academia was nonetheless affected by the popular association of German speaking with national disloyalty. Schools that saw a decline in German enrollment were public as well as private, religious as well as

Justine Greve graduated from Baker University with a bachelor’s degree in history, German, and English. In 2013 she completed her master’s degree in American studies at the University of Kansas. Her overarching research interests include American history and religion in the early twentieth century. The author wishes to thank John Richards and the anonymous readers at Kansas History for their thoughtful comments on previous drafts of this article.

1. Terrence G. Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Policies and the Fate of German in North America,” in Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities, ed. Thomas Ricento and Barbara Burnaby (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), 223, 231; Barbara Tischler, “One Hundred Percent Americanism and Music in Boston during World War I,” American Music 4 (Summer 1986): 164; LaVern J. Rippley, The German-Americans (1976; reprint, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), 186. 2. Frederick Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974); LaVern J. Rippley, The German-Americans (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976); Don H. Tolzmann, German Americans in the World Wars (München: K.G. Saur, 1995); and Carl Wittke, The German-Language Press in America (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957).

Language and Loyalty 131 secular, “100 percent American” as well as German. Though the phenomenon as a whole can be super- ficially explained as “patriotism,” this tells us little about the specific reasons schools shied away from the language. A closer look at the elimination of German in two Kansas institutions indicates that the motives varied with individual schools’ circumstances. In many cases—at least, on the surface—rejecting Ger- man classes, clubs, and culture was a voluntary statement of national allegiance, either on the part of the administration or the student body. At Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, prowar enthusiasm was coupled with an anti-German sentiment, likely fueled by the highly respected and Germanophobic Wil- liam Alfred Quayle, a Methodist bishop and former president of the university. As a result, students at Baker abandoned German as a field of study. At Bethel College in North Newton, the “patriotic” elimination of the German language was driven in part by fear and the school’s perceived need to prove its national loyalty. Experience with anti-Ger- manism and anti-pacifism caused the Mennonite-affiliated institution to drop German, hoping to estab- lish a patriotic image for its students and staff—members of a group that This lithograph, printed in the New York Herald on April 12, 1917, shows a searchlight otherwise appeared subversive. scanning a marching crowd of German Americans, depicted stereotypically as portly men with handlebar mustaches and long pipes. The U.S. government classified hundreds of thousands of German American men as “enemy aliens” during World War I, leaving them vulnerable to aker and Bethel represent searches, property seizure, and even internment. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and two models of the “patri- Photographs Division, Washington, D.C otic” rejection of German: one apparently lighthearted and the other involuntary. Yet as with most binary catego- only to recognize oppression and privilege, but also to re- Bries, the distinction is not actually so clear-cut. Any resident think the motives of the patriots who seem to have given up of the U.S. is under the gaze of Uncle Sam and, in a national German so easily and pressured their neighbors to do the crisis situation, likely aware of his or her own performance same. With their own claim to American authenticity on the of patriotism. Though certain behaviors are more danger- line, xenophobia may have felt for some like the best—even ous and certain people more closely watched than others, a necessary—option. all people must police themselves. Thus it is necessary not

132 Kansas History he First World War was not the first time in many students refused to enroll in German classes. In American history that German speakers had 1915 about a quarter of high school students studied Ger- been ill-treated. In the mid-1800s, religious dif- man; by 1922 that number was at less than 1 percent. The ferences and a rise in nativism created tension Newton Weekly Kansan-Republican reported in 1918 that in between (often Catholic) Germans and the English-speak- Kansas, “all high schools and academies have eliminated ingT Protestant majority. Nativists’ primary concern was the language, and practically all elementary schools have that teaching immigrant school children in their native done likewise.” Such an inclusive report seems extreme language hindered the process of assimilation. Instruc- but may not have been far off. Historian Arlyn John Par- tion of German as a second language does not seem to ish agrees that by 1918, “practically all schools substituted have been a subject of concern; the problem was not with other courses for German.”5 the German language itself, but the obstinate foreignness The story of German instruction at the university level some Americans attributed to its immigrant speakers.3 is somewhat harder to trace. Clearly, German teaching This reluctance to assimilate took on a more serious raised suspicions at some institutions. In 1918 six mem- meaning in 1914, as many German Americans supported bers of the German faculty at the University of Michi- their former country while most of the American pub- gan were removed on charges of disloyalty—their sub- lic fell behind England and France. In 1917 the countries ject matter apparently grounds for dismissal.6 In Kansas, became official enemies, and loyal American citizens some schools (such as Bethel College and Fort Hays Kan- branded German the language of the Hun. No longer sas Normal School) eliminated German outright. Others, merely a sign of laziness, German speaking could be the such as Baker and the University of Kansas, kept German mark of subversion. According to historian Terrence Wi- classes on the books, even as students refused to enroll. ley, around 18,000 people across the Midwest “were fined Persecution of German speakers and discouragement for language violations” during this era. Punishments fre- of all things German came in forms ranging from presi- quently went far beyond fines—to arrests, threats, beat- dential edicts to glances from neighbors or instances of ings, or even lynchings—when language violations cou- vigilante violence. In Kansas, non-naturalized German pled with lack of support for the war effort. In Worden, immigrants were required to obtain permits in order to Kansas, for example, three men tarred a Lutheran pastor enter certain parts of the capital city. Governor Arthur for refusing to preach in English or in support of the war.4 Capper kept a “slackers file,” which contained correspon- Though language was always a factor in anti-German dence regarding possible German subversives. On the sentiment, the linguistic aspect of the campaign was pri- more local level, groups like the Barton County “Night marily focused on the elimination of German in schools. Riders” set about “to clean up the county of German Americans viewed education as an important force both spies, German sympathizers and dirty slackers.”7 The in assimilation and in the war effort. Many educators (and, threats and actions of “loyalty leagues” and other self- indeed, the National Education Association) opposed appointed patriots were most common in areas highly German language instruction in American classrooms. populated by German immigrants but were certainly not Though the efforts were concentrated on the elementary limited to them. Indeed, “there was hardly a community grades, German was also eliminated from many high in the United States,” writes Carl Wittke in his study of schools and some colleges. A March 1918 survey indicated that 15 percent of American secondary schools had eliminated German from their curricula. The change was particularly pronounced in certain areas. Prior to the war, 5. Arlyn John Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” Fort 96 percent of high schools in Michigan offered German; Hays Studies––New Series: History Series (May 1968): 53; “Bethel Takes a by 1920 that number had decreased to less than 8 percent. Sweeping Step,” Newton Weekly Kansan-Republican, September 18, 1918, 3; see also Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Even when the language was not actually eliminated, Policies,” 226, 229. 6. Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Policies,” 222; Clifford Wilcox, “World War I and the Attack on Professors of German at the University of Michigan,” History of Education Quarterly 33 (Spring 1993): 59–84. Wilcox notes that these professors were primarily 3. Wiley, “The Imposition of World War I Era English-Only Policies,” “singled out . . . for ideological reasons” rather than ethnicity (several 214, 216. were of German descent). The university defended two other ethnically 4. Ibid., 220, 223; “Preacher given coat of tar by strangers,” Topeka German professors against alumni who called for their removal (p. 62). (Kans.) Daily Capital, May 10, 1918, Kansas Memory Database, item 7. “Disloyalists are warned,” Inman Review, April 26, 1918, Kansas #213502, www.kansasmemory.org. Memory Database, item #213538, www.kansasmemory.org; “Governor

Language and Loyalty 133 Figure 1. Although this map shows that Pottawatomie County contained only four German settlements, the Kansas City Star in June 1918 condemned it as “the most disloyal county in the state.” The article listed the offenses of alleged enemy aliens from throughout the county, including Wamego resident Louis B. Leach's crime of refusing to give to the Red Cross. Although he “subscribed heavily” to the Liberty Loan, he found the sidewalk of his home branded with a cross in yellow paint. When Leach told a committee of patriots, “You can tar and feather me, or even kill me, I won't give a cent,” vandals painted his car with crosses and the word “Slacker.” Map originally published in J. Neale Carman, Foreign- Language Units of Kansas I. Historical Atlas and Statistics (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1962), 46. Courtesy of the University Press of Kansas. the German-language press, “which did not have a ‘Secu- cialized in hunting German spies.”8 Tarring and featherings rity League,’ ‘Loyalty League,’ ‘Citizens’ Patriotic League,’ took place in the highly German McPherson County, but or some other volunteer vigilante organization which spe- also in the more “American” Douglas County. The Kansas City Star declared Pottawatomie County “the most disloyal county in the state” (“dotted with slackers and disloyalists”), though it contained relatively few German settlements (see

Arthur Capper’s slackers file,” General Correspondence, folder 11, box Figure 1). Of course, the “100 percent Americans” of the area 36, Arthur Capper Administration, Records of the Governor’s Office, State Archives Division, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka; Kansas Memory Database, item #212615, www.kansasmemory.org; “All alien enemies liable to arrest,” Topeka Daily Capital, June 19, 1917; “Watch enemy women,” Topeka Daily Capital, September 19, 1918. 8. Wittke, The German-Language Press in America, 268.

134 Kansas History In 1916 Baker University’s German club, Die Lustigen Deutschen, numbered twenty-three members, as shown in this photo from the university’s yearbook. The student newspaper, the Baker Orange, reported the club's activities regularly; the club held biweekly meetings, hosted a yearly program of skits and traditional German songs, and organized events such as picnics for members. By 1919 the club had not been mentioned in the Orange for two years, and the yearbook's cartoonist concluded that German at Baker was all but forbidden. Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas.

were working hard to correct this with threats, yellow paint, man ruling lineage, was both a literary society and one of and tar.9 Nowhere was a German speaker completely safe. the rotating names for Baker graduating classes. Course catalogs from this period listed thirteen semester-length Ger- or most students at Baker University, German was man courses. Though prewar yearbooks did not list seniors’ a second language and foreign culture. But before courses of study, the large number of German club members the U.S. entered World War I, German was a popu- (all of whom had at least two years of German experience) lar interest. The school had an active and vibrant and class offerings suggests that several students each year German club—Die Lustigen Deutschen—with twenty-three graduated with a major or minor in German.10 members,F biweekly meetings, and an annual program of German songs and skits. The “House of Hanover,” a Ger-

D. Keel, “Deitsch, Däätsch, Düütsch, and Dietsch: The Varieties of Kansas German Dialects after 150 Years of German Group Settlement in 9. “Preacher given coat of tar by strangers,” Topeka Daily Capital, May Kansas,” Department of German Languages and Literature, University 10, 1918; “Use tar and feathers,” McPherson Daily Republican, April 23, of Kansas, at http://www2.ku.edu/~germanic/LAKGD/William_ 1918, Kansas Memory Database, item #213529, www.kansasmemory.org; Keel_Essay.shtml. “On trail of disloyalty,” Kansas City Star, June 9, 1918, Kansas Memory 10. “Die Lustigen Deutschen,” in Orange Blossoms (Baldwin City, Database, item #213516, www.kansasmemory.org. See also William Kans.: Baker University, 1916), 138.

Language and Loyalty 135 change in attitudes toward Germany. A political cartoon in the 1919 yearbook illustrated the fate of German language and culture at Baker. The cartoon depicted two Germans discussing the boarded-up “German Club” building. When one asked the reason for the clo- sure, the other explained, “Because, in der Baker University all tings vot haf der Cherman label or der limburger schmell iss verboten” (see Figure 2). Indeed, reports of German Club activities disappeared from the Orange around the time of U.S. entry into the war. The paper reported on a German club picnic in October 1917—the week after the influential Bishop Quayle gave his first campus speech decrying the use of the German language.12 Af- ter that activity, no more articles about German club activities appeared in the Orange, even though the press continued to cover other campus groups (including language clubs). Figure 2. This political cartoon, published in the Baker University Yearbook in 1919, comments In 1918 the senior class (the “House upon the gradual elimination of "all tings vot haf der Cherman label" from the university. of Hanover”) decided to follow the Although the cartoon suggests German cultural activities and classes were officially verboten, lead of the English crown and change the cartoonist was not entirely accurate. In fact, President Lough decided in May 1918 not to discontinue Baker University's language program despite pressure from “several sources” to do its name to the “House of Winsor so. Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas. [sic].” The 1919 yearbook explained the change: “In 1914 came the Great World War, and during those years the Ruling House of Germany carried on a war so s at other schools across the country, patriotic ruthless that her name will forever be marked as the black- fervor overtook Baker once Congress declared est in history.” In response, students decided “that the name war on Germany. A significant number of stu- of Hanover should forever be discarded.”13 Unsurprisingly, dents left to join the army. Most others were none of the members of that class graduated with a major involved in the Red Cross, the Students’ Army Training or minor in German. In fact, as of December 1919, the presi- ACorps, or other patriotic organizations and initiatives. Edi- dent reported the retirement of the former German profes- tions of the school newspaper, the Baker Orange, were filled sor, noting that no one at Baker had taken a German class in with news from the front, what Baker students were doing two years.14 to help out, and ideas for how students could become involved in the war effort. At the Board of Trustees meeting in June 1917, university president Samuel Lough reported that “Baker seems to have been conspicuously responsive to the calls of patriotism and the stimulus created by the crisis 11 in our national affairs.” This nationalism led to a drastic Baldwin City, Kansas, 81; “Best wishes soldiers,” (Baldwin City, Kans.) Baker Orange, December 15, 1917. 12. The “Yank,” Baker University Yearbook (Baldwin, Kans.: Baker University, 1919), 126; “German club picnic,” Baker Orange, October 27, 1917. 13. The “Yank,” 1919, 62. 11. Trustees Minutes, Dec. 1910–Dec. 1925, Baker University Archives, 14. Trustees Minutes, Dec. 1910–Dec. 1925, 154.

136 Kansas History Before 1918 both a graduating class and a literary society at Baker University had taken the title of “House of Hanover” as a symbol of German cultural pride. Students decided in 1918 to change the name to “House of Windsor,” as seen in this image from the 1919 Baker University Yearbook, publicly discarding Hanover as a name “marked as the blackest in history.” Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas.

While the cartoonist responsible for that German club was good pedagogic practice, Lough concluded, to keep drawing got the overall picture right, the word choice was teaching German.15 actually a little off. All things German were eliminated from The university maintained this position despite the Baker, but they were not actually verboten. Despite some fact that Baker students completely stopped enrolling in pressure to officially do away with German, the school’s the language. The German courses listed in the 1918–1919 administration was not responsible for the changes that catalog were essentially the same as those from preceding took place. years. From 1919 to 1921, the catalogs listed only four Ger- The university’s position on German instruction was ev- man courses. This was a drastic reduction from the thirteen ident in the minutes of a Board of Trustees meeting held in offered in 1916, but still an optimistic assertion, consider- May 1918. At the meeting, President Lough told the Board ing that no students at all were enrolling in German. That of Trustees that “several sources” had suggested remov- the university kept a basic German program on the books ing German from the curriculum, at least temporarily. The (even after the retirement of its only German professor) president noted that he did not want people to see Baker indicates that the administration did not change its posi- as sympathetic to Germany if it continued teaching the lan- tion either to fit campus reality or comply with public anti- guage. Nevertheless, he was “persuaded” that eliminating German sentiment. It was a fruitless gesture, perhaps, but the subject “would be a serious mistake.” Continued Ger- symbolically significant. man instruction, in Lough’s mind, was a more sensible, Baker’s symbolic decision to maintain a German pro- as well as more patriotic option. He argued that refusing gram was possible because it did not feel a need to prove to learn the language of the enemy put the country at a its national loyalty. Baker was, for the most part, “100 per- great disadvantage. After all, German citizens continued cent American.” Its foreign elements—where they existed— to learn English and French. And he was not alone in his belief: a national conference on education standards had also warned against the militaristic disadvantage created by eliminating German programs in American schools. It 15. Ibid., 117.

Language and Loyalty 137 In addition to Baker’s ethnic neutrality, the school’s af- filiation with the Methodist Church contributed to its cre- dentials as a loyal institution. The denomination treated the conflict almost as a religious war. In churches, at conferences, and in Methodist publications, writers and speakers presented the conflict as a fight between good and evil; a victory would be a triumph for justice, God, and right. For some preachers, this position translated explicitly into being anti-German. The strongest of the prowar, anti-German preaching at Baker came from Bishop William Alfred Quayle. Bishop Quayle was a powerful figure at Baker—a highly respected former professor and sort of campus spiritual leader.17 When Quayle spoke, Baker listened. So when the bishop delivered anti-Ger- man speeches and sermons, students may have begun re- evaluating their affiliations. In October 1917, Quayle gave an extremely anti-Ger- man speech at a campus chapel service. He vilified the Germans, calling “every allegiance and connection with Germany . . . vile and contemptible” and proclaiming that “the man who talks pro-Germanism now talks fool-oso- phy.” “The German language,” he concluded, “should be Samuel Alexander Lough (1864–1946) served as president of Baker extinct, because it teaches German culture and German University from 1917 to 1921. He resisted pressure to discontinue customs, and these we do not want.” The following Janu- German language courses at the university, continuing to offer them even as students refused to enroll. Courtesy of Baker University and ary, the Orange reported that Quayle had written a letter Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin City, Kansas. to Herbert Hoover, criticizing the Germans on the basis of their beer culture, attributing “the unthinkable barba- rism of the German armies” to their “centuries of beer drinking.”18 were not threateningly foreign in the way some Americans perceived Germans to be. Homer Kingsley Ebright, author of a history of Baker, related an anecdote about the natu- 17. “Rhetorical connections between good and the Allies (and evil ralization of some Baldwin City residents—including Presi- and Germany) were not subtle. In an article in the Methodist Review, dent Lough—who had not yet become American citizens. Bishop William McDowell declared: “God is not on the side of the Kaiser. Of those he mentioned, one (Lough) was Canadian, another God is on the side of mankind.” William F. McDowell, “The Church in a World at War,” Methodist Review 34 (July/August 1918): 509. In a similar British, and the third a Spanish speaker. Ebright attended spirit, the Central Christian Advocate (St. Louis, Mo.) observed that “the the ceremony himself and reflected that he “enjoyed helping decision for war was voted on Good Friday—the day on which the Great these ‘foreigners’ become American citizens.”16 His place- Martyr died for humanity,” pointedly suggesting that the war was a righteous undertaking. “It Is War,” Central Christian Advocate, April 11, ment of quotation marks and lighthearted discussion of the 1917. Shortly thereafter, the magazine printed a “Letter to Methodists” ceremony indicated the positive patriotic spirit at Baker. If on behalf of the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Church stating that the new American citizens underwent naturalization be- Christians must not be afraid to sacrifice peace for a just cause. “As followers of Jesus Christ,” they wrote, “we labor and pray for the reign cause they feared the consequences of not doing so, that of peace. But . . . There can be no peace, and there ought to be no peace, sentiment did not make it into Ebright’s later interpretation until it stands squarely based upon righteousness. We stand with the of the event. President in his message to Congress where he said: ‘The right is more precious than peace.’” L. B. Wilson, “The Church in War Time: Semi- Annual Meeting of the Board of Bishops, Methodist Episcopal Church, April 25 to 30,” Central Christian Advocate, May 9, 1917. For Bishop Quayle, see Baker University Yearbook (Baldwin City, Kans.: Junior Class of Baker University, 1921), 4. 16. Homer Kingsley Ebright, The History of Baker University (Baldwin 18. “Bishop Quayle writes to Herbert Hoover,” Baker Orange, January City, Kans.: [Baker University], 1951), 200. 12, 1918; “Addresses student body,” Baker Orange, October 20, 1917.

138 Kansas History one: “God is resolute and stands for a clean world, Germany is a damn world . . . This war is to see whether God or the devil is going to rule.” Even after the war was techni- cally over, Quayle kept up the intensity of his beliefs. In March 1919, he spoke on the war, demonstrating his attitude against the Ger- man people, not just their rulers, and indicat- ing that he sought retribution, not a forgiv- ing peace.19 Quayle persistently linked evil with Ger- many and German military behavior with German language and culture—a position that Baker students would have been exposed to in the school newspaper as well. Though the Orange never took a direct stance on the appropriateness of German language instruction, it ran several stories from papers around the country that addressed this issue. A December 1917 article acknowledged that “there is the very proper use of German, as well as French and Spanish,” but noted that “this is a different thing from the mis- chievous and partisan forcing of German in the lower grades.” Teaching German, it argued, was sometimes “for a purely selfish, anti-national, un-American reason” (despite teachers’ assertions about its “scientific and cultural value”). Another article similarly conceded the academic and practical value Bishop William Alfred Quayle (1860–1925) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and of learning the language but maintained that former professor and president of Baker University, enjoyed a prestigious reputation German propagandists used language in- at his alma mater. When he visited Baker University in October 1917 to deliver a struction as a way to promote German ideas, speech condemning the German culture and language, students listened, voluntarily politics, culture, and nationalism in Ameri- ceasing to enroll in German classes. However, the patriotism they displayed appears less voluntary and more coerced when positioned against the threat of harassment ca’s public schools. Perhaps Baker students that loomed over many German Americans in the Midwest after the U.S. entered the found it easiest to drop German altogether war. Courtesy of Baker University and Kansas United Methodist Archives, Baldwin rather than risk learning “not German, but City, Kansas. Germanism.”20 As Baker newspapers and yearbooks presented it, students’ decision to abandon Ger- man was much more patriotic than paranoid, few months later, Quayle gave another well-at- much more fun than fearful. For the most part, students tended and anti-German speech, arguing that at Baker probably decided against taking German classes one can make “no distinction between the Ger man people and their rulers.” He spoke dis- paragingly about supporters of Germany, or those who Abelieved “that we should meet her and extend our hand, 19. “Bishop Quayle here on Wednesday,” Baker Orange, April 6, 1918; then show her the rightfulness of living. Those kind of “Bishop W. A. Quayle speaks on ‘present tense of war,’” Baker Orange, March 17, 1919. people are unsympathetic with God, if they are in sympa- 20. “Stop teaching Germanism,” Baker Orange, November 3, 1917; thy with Germany.” For Quayle, the war was a religious “German in the schools,” Baker Orange, December 1, 1917.

Language and Loyalty 139 In central Kansas, a cluster of counties holds a large number of Mennonite communities and Anabaptist institutions. The area shown in this map includes Hesston College, McPherson College, and Tabor College in Hillsboro, all of which lie within thirty miles of Bethel College in Newton. Originally published in J. Neale Carman, Foreign-Language Units of Kansas I. Historical Atlas and Statistics (Lawrence: University of Kan- sas Press, 1962), 58. Courtesy of the University Press of Kansas.

140 Kansas History as a “voluntary” show of patriotism rather than from fear baptists who opposed war on principle. While Baker’s of persecution if they did enroll. But the nationalism of Methodism solidified the appearance of loyalty, Bethel’s Baker students—even the 100 percent Americans among Mennonite, German-speaking identity made the school them—cannot really be seen as completely un-coerced. automatically suspect. To counteract its “slacker” appear- Patriotism is a value in America, and during World War I, ance, Bethel students made concessions to patriotic peer it took on a religious quality. While Baldwin City did not pressure (or in some cases got caught up in the wartime see the anti-German violence of areas more heavily pop- spirit themselves). Eliminating German became a part of ulated by German immigrants, German sympathy was the school’s plan—“voluntary” or not—to prove Bethel’s hardly acceptable. The school newspaper reported that a loyalty through alternative means. young Baldwin man was arrested after his landlady told the police about some seemingly pro-German articles in he wartime atmosphere was threatening for the man’s room, including a picture of the emperor. He Mennonites—particularly in the Midwest. Gov- was soon released, but the case illustrated the real danger ernment intelligence agencies suspected Menno- of giving others any reason to suspect disloyalty.21 With nites might be communists or undercover Ger- incidents like this one and campus speakers like Bishop man agents. Many midwestern Mennonites were verbally Quayle, students hoping to be perceived as good Amer- orT physically harassed and even subjected to serious acts icans and good Christians may have felt they had little of mob violence. Three men in McPherson County were choice but to shy away from taking German. tarred and feathered for not buying liberty bonds. One of The wartime atmosphere at Bethel College was much dif- the men, Charles Diener, recalled that the mob came to his ferent than that at Baker, largely because the prewar atmo- home after he removed a flag the community members had sphere was much different. Founded by German-speaking put on his father’s church. While the family did try to avoid Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the mid-1870s, buying bonds, he said his family’s loyalties lay “with the Bethel College was essentially bilingual. Many students United States. We weren’t pro-German.” The family did spoke German as a native language, and the college—espe- not even speak German at home. In another instance of cially its older leaders—considered this an important part mob violence, Burrton resident John Schrag was beaten, of its identity.22 Course catalogs were comprised of two drenched in yellow paint, and nearly lynched on Armi- sections: one in English and one in German. The German stice Day—also accused of failing to purchase war bonds.23 department offered both classes for native speakers and In order to avoid this sort of ostracism or to avoid the those for students learning German as a second language. draft, a few hundred Mennonites—probably between six The Board of Directors conducted its meetings in German and eight hundred—moved to Canada between 1917 and (a practice that continued into the 1920s), and the school 1918.24 This included a handful of young men from Bethel newsletter (Monatsblätter) printed some articles in German and the surrounding area. and others in English. Unlike other Kansas schools, where the war brought a flood of patriotism and mass exodus to enlist, Bethel approached the war and military service more cautiously. The school was composed primarily of Mennonites—Ana- 23. Interview with Charles Gordon, Schowalter Oral History Collection (OH.1), Gordon folder, box 2, Mennonite Church USA Archives, Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel University, North Newton, Kansas (hereafter cited as “Oral History Collection”). Interview with Charles Diener, Diener folder, box 1, Oral History Collection; see also James C. Juhnke, “Mob Violence and Kansas Mennonites in 1918,” 21. “Cap’ Taylor a German spy?” Baker Orange, February 16, 1918. Kansas Historical Quarterly 43 (Autumn 1977): 334–50, also available at 22. President Kliewer expressed this sentiment in a letter to German http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1977/77_3_juhnke.htm; Allan Teichroew, professor H. H. Wiebe, in which Kliewer described a current German “Military Surveillance of Mennonites in World War I,” Mennonite Quarterly instructor. He said that “for an American, she has mastered German very Review 53 (April 1979): 99. well” and that she would be successful at a “non-German school.” The 24. Additionally, many Hutterites, also facing persecution for their comment assumed that at a place like Bethel, her language skills and ethnicity and religious beliefs, moved to Canada during the war years. ethnic background prevented her from truly fitting in. John Kliewer to Unlike the Mennonites, who tended to move individually or in small H. H. Wiebe, March 24, 1916, “Wiebe, H. H.,” folder 560, box 3, Bethel groups, Hutterites often resettled as whole communities. About one College Archives, John Walter Kliewer Presidential Papers (III.1.A.1.c), thousand Hutterites moved to Canada during the war. Allan Teichroew, Mennonite Church USA Archives, Mennonite Library and Archives, “World War I and the Mennonite Migration to Canada to Avoid the Bethel University, North Newton, Kansas; Keith L. Sprunger, Bethel College Draft,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 45 (July 1971): 246. The numbers of Kansas, 1887–2012 (North Newton, Kans.: Bethel College, 2012), 16. Teichroew quotes are from Frank Epp, “My Own History Allows Me No

Language and Loyalty 141 ethel students and staff were aware of the serious were in human need, would be permissible,” he was sen- consequences for objecting to war service. Many sitive to the moral ambiguity of the situation. “It was not letters to the school’s president, John Kliewer, easy to give an answer that would serve as norm under discussed the possibility of being sent to the all circumstances,” he later wrote.27 Most Bethel students prison at Fort Leavenworth for not serving. In order to considered noncombatant work the best option. Ulti- Bavoid this fate, many became less dogmatic about avoid- mately, about 7 percent of the 315 Kansas Mennonites ing anything war-related. Mennonite pastors and leaders who were drafted took up regular army service, and 48 encouraged young men to register for the draft, viewing percent took noncombatant jobs, such as sanitation work. it as a necessary step in obtaining exemption from service, The remaining 45 percent refused service entirely.28 as well as an indicator of support for America. Mennonite Since most Mennonites were unwilling to fight, they historian Allan Teichroew writes that church leaders in had to prove their loyalty to the U.S. in other ways. Early fact “had few compunctions about work in the interests in the war, some Mennonites had expressed pro-German of the nation as long as it was civilian in nature and free sympathies. For example, the German-language maga- from military control.”25 zine Der Vorwärts, published in McPherson, was unusu- As it turned out, noncombatant work was not always ally outspoken in support of Germany and hosted fund civilian. While some Mennonites obtained farm furloughs drives for the German Red Cross. As the war progressed, or were assigned to reconstructive work in Europe, many however, most overt pro-Germanism disappeared, and others reported to army camps—where some experienced Mennonites became more willing to provide tangible sup- harassment and uncertainty about what kind of work to port for America. Though liberty bonds clearly funded the give to the Mennonite recruits. Indeed, the enlistees them- war effort, patriotic citizens strongly encouraged Menno- selves did not always know just what they could ethically nites to buy them, and the Sedition Act of 1918 made it a do in service of the nation. They had little to go on. The crime to impede their sale. Saying anything “disloyal . . . U.S. government was slow in defining noncombatant ser- or abusive” about the U.S. or dissuading others from buy- vice, and Mennonite ideas about how much and what ing bonds could carry harsh penalties—jail time or hefty type of work their men should accept varied widely.26 fines, in addition to being branded a subversive by one’s Bethel president Kliewer spent time helping students, neighbors. While most Mennonites initially avoided pur- faculty, and staff negotiate positions that would keep chasing liberty bonds, most eventually gave in to the pres- them out of prison and morally uncompromised. While sure to do so—justifying them as a kind of tax they had to Kliewer himself felt “that serving soldiers, when they “render unto Caesar.”29

Escape,” in I Would Like to Dodge the Draft-Dodgers, But . . . , ed. Frank Epp 27. Memoirs of J. W. Kliewer: Or, from Herdboy to College President (Waterloo, Ontario: Conrad Press, 1970), 13. Epp’s source for the figures (North Newton, Kans.: Bethel College, 1943), 87–88; H. J. Krehbiel to is J. A. Calder, minister of colonization and immigration, in a House of John Kliewer, April 17, 1918, “January–July 1918,” folder 17, box 3, Commons debate, May 19, 1919. Kliewer Papers. Kliewer did some of this work as a member of the Peace 25. Allan Teichroew, “World War I and Mennonite Migration,” 221, Committee of the General Conference, whose goal, Kliewer explained, 224; see also General Correspondence Files, John Walter Kliewer and “was to help young men who . . . had come into difficulties because of Emma Ruth Kliewer Papers (MLA.MS.28), Mennonite Church USA their non-participation in war preparations.” Archives, Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel University, North 28. James C. Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms: The Political Newton, Kansas (hereafter cited as “Kliewer Papers”). Nationwide, the Acculturation of the Kansas Mennonites (Newton, Kans.: Faith and Life army court-martialed 504 conscientious objectors and sentenced most Press, 1975), 103; Wedel, The Story of Bethel College, 240; Sprunger, Bethel of them to prison. James C. Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War: Mennonite College of Kansas, 57. Identity and Organization in America, 1890–1930 (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald 29. “The U.S. Sedition Act,” in United States Statutes at Large, vol. 40, Press, 1989), 237. April 1917–March 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 26. Teichroew, “World War I and Mennonite Migration,” 220–27. In 1919), 553–54, also available online at www.gwpda.org/1918/usspy.html; an interview in the Schowalter Oral History Collection, Henry Cooprider Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 55; Juhnke, A People remembered being threatened while in an army camp that he would be of Two Kingdoms, 104; Juhnke, “Mob Violence”; Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, shot by firing squad for not serving in a combat role. Cooprider folder, War, 212. According to Sprunger, “most Mennonites of Harvey County box 1, Oral History Collection. Some conscientious objectors were very likely bought a bond or two, although reluctantly” (Sprunger, Bethel subjected to forms of torture, such as having to stand for hours with College of Kansas, 58). It seems that some Mennonites were able to placate their arms extended. Glenn Wiebe, General Exodus: The Kansas Mennonite their neighbors by giving to the American Red Cross instead of buying Migration to Canada during World War I, (master’s thesis, Wichita State liberty bonds. Interviews in the Schowalter Oral History Collection with University, 1995), 30; Peter J. Wedel, The Story of Bethel College (North Isaac T. Neufeld and John P. Franz suggested this fact. Neufeld folder, Newton, Kans: Bethel College, 1954), 236. box 2, and Franz folder, box 2, Oral History Collection.

142 Kansas History Bonds could be a useful sort of tax, in that buying them in size and activities, but its pro-German sentiment seems could help dispel charges of disloyalty. Hoping their neigh- to have been even more intense. In early 1917, the group bors would see them as more American than German, published a long article in the Monatsblätter on the school’s Bethel students advertised liberty bonds in the Bethel Col- deep connection to Germany and the obligation every club lege Monthly, donated to the YMCA and Red Cross, and flew member had to promote German culture and language. This American flags on campus.30 In the fall of 1918, the elimina- attitude continued even after the U.S. entered the war. A tion of German would join the list of such concessions. January 1918 article in the Bethel newspaper declared: “The The show of patriotism at Bethel was not entirely a show. students of Bethel have not yet lost interest in the Deutsche Many Mennonites were patriotic—they were grateful for Verein. They still consider this as one of the important orga- the freedom and prosperity they had found in America nizations [of] the school.”34 and were willing to support the country in its fight for de- School leaders felt the same way about German language mocracy. As historian James Juhnke notes, “the Mennonites instruction that some students felt about the club. Judging wanted to be good Americans as well as good Christians. by listings in the course catalog, Bethel had planned to of- They did not consider themselves slackers or disloyalists.” fer its normal selection of German classes during the 1918– At Bethel, students emphasized their “100 percent loyalty.”31 1919 school year. However, during a “Special Meeting” in The school took pride in the service flag hung in the hall of September 1918, the faculty passed a resolution eliminat- the main building—with stars representing the 148 students ing German from the school. Two days later, the Newton who had served in the war. Some students and staff were Weekly Kansan-Republican printed an article proclaiming that strong advocates for their country—with “outright enthusi- “Bethel, the leading Mennonite college in America, a school asm for supporting and winning the war.” History profes- founded and supported chiefly by German speaking peo- sor C. C. Regier even talked about the war as a “righteous ple, has taken a step farther than any other college in the crusade”—a description one might have heard at Baker. state in the matter of doing away with the teaching of Ger- These progressive students and staff also embraced the shift man as a language.”35 This decision meant not only the to English as a positive, modern move. Regier, for one, was end of German instruction but of all obvious use of German glad when Bethel finally became “an entirely English (or and support of its culture. As of October 1918, the formerly rather American) institution.”32 bilingual Monatsblätter became the Bethel College Monthly, Bethel had been moving toward English for quite some and articles appeared primarily in English. The German time. Although about 80 percent of the first Bethel College club disappeared (without elegy or explanation). The school course catalog (1893–1894) was written in German, by 1917 newspaper stopped reporting German club activities some- just 17 percent of the catalog was German. Many students time in 1918, and by 1919 the yearbook no longer included spoke German at home, but not all did, and students often the group as a campus organization. Church services at the preferred to take classes in English. Furthermore, as Bethel campus church switched into English.36 As at Baker, patrio- tried to attract non-Mennonite students, moving toward tism (be it voluntary or forced) won out. English was a necessity.33 Nevertheless, Bethel students were more closely tied to German language and heritage than students at Baker or at most other Kansas colleges. This connection was evident in Bethel’s German club— Die Deutsche Verein. It was similar to Baker’s German club

34. “Deutsche Verein Not Germany,” Bethel Breeze, January 22, 1918; Monatsblätter (Newton, Kans.), February 15, 1917, 4. 35. “Bethel Takes a Sweeping Step,” Newton Weekly Kansan- Republican, September 18, 1918, 3; “Special Meeting, Monday, Sept. 16,” Faculty Minutes 1910–21, folder 4, box 1, Faculty Meeting Minutes (MLA.III.1.A.5.a), Mennonite Church USA Archives, Mennonite Library 30. “Our National Colors,” Bethel Breeze (Newton, Kans.), February and Archives, Bethel University, North Newton, Kansas (hereafter cited 12, 1918. Wedel reported that Bethel students gave about $1,700 to Army as “Faculty Minutes”). YMCA camps during the war. The Story of Bethel College, 240. 36. While the Bethel College church switched to English, some other 31. Sprunger, Bethel College of Kansas, 55, citing the Bethel Breeze, May churches in Newton continued to conduct services in German, even 21, 1918; James C. Juhnke, “Mob Violence, 336.” after pressure from the community to switch. Many older members of 32. Sprunger, Bethel College of Kansas, 56, 59; Wedel, The Story of Bethel the Mennonite church in town would have been unable to understand College, 239. English services (Kliewer, Memoirs, 93). Indeed, according to Glenn 33. Wedel, The Story of Bethel College, 267; Sprunger, Bethel College of Wiebe, “most Mennonite churches in Kansas continued to use German Kansas, 44. despite the threat of violence” (Wiebe, General Exodus, 39).

Language and Loyalty 143 John Walter Kliewer (1869–1938), president of Bethel College from 1911 to 1920 and again from 1925 to 1932, poses here with his wife Emma and his children Ruth, Karl, and Paul. Kliewer worked throughout the war to help Mennonites avoid military service without suffering violence or imprisonment. Kliewer ultimately bowed to pressure to eliminate German classes at Bethel College, believing that severing German cultural ties might allow the college’s students and other Mennonites to follow their religious beliefs without harassment. Photograph number 2007-158, courtesy of the Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.

The faculty resolution eliminating German from Bethel within earshot of the Newton Kansan-Republican editors), but explicitly stated the reason behind the decision: “Whereas administrators and faculty members felt that teaching Ger- the use of the German language calls the loyalty of Bethel man left the college open to charges of anti-Americanism. College into question at this time be it resolved that the Ger- Considering public attitudes about speaking Ger- man language be eliminated from this institution.”37 A sub- man, it seems unlikely that the decision was un-coerced. headline for the Newton paper’s article on Bethel’s decision Newtonians had no tolerance for the language of the declared: “ACTION IS VOLUNTARY.” The paper consid- Kaiser. At one point, the community tried (unsuccess- ered the move unprovoked, claiming that no one had com- fully) to ban German publications. Multiple acquain- plained about Bethel offering German at the college and that tances of Bethel President John Kliewer were suspected there had not been “any accusations or insinuations of a dis- of—or arrested on—charges of disloyalty.39 Kliewer wrote loyal spirit in the college faculty or its management.”38 Per- in a letter to the Board of Directors that he felt people in haps no outward threats or comments were made (at least Newton were raising “quite a stir” over Bethel’s teaching

37. “Special Meeting, Monday, Sept. 16,” Faculty Minutes 1910–21, 39. C. C. Regier to John Kliewer, March 6, 1918, “January–July 1918,” folder 4, box 1, Faculty Minutes. folder 17, box 3, Kliewer Papers; H. H. Ewert to John Kliewer, April 38. “Bethel Takes a Sweeping Step,” Newton Weekly Kansan-Republican, 10, 1918, “January–July 1918,” folder 17, box 3, Kliewer Papers; Parish, September 18, 1918, 3. “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 52.

144 Kansas History of German. “Friends of our school,” he said, had repeat- patriotic citizens from targeting the school. At Tabor, Parrish edly heard Newtonians suggest that Bethel be shut down concludes that German courses were not eliminated because due to its pro-German stance.40 There was certainly no the majority of the town’s population was German.43 Maybe law that required Bethel to take the action it did, but the the same logic can be applied to McPherson.44 school’s ethnic and religious identity, as well as the atmo- Why, then, was Bethel different? Perhaps Newton had a sphere in the community, made it vital that Bethel sever its large enough non-German population to make the pressure German connection to whatever extent it could. it put on its German speakers substantial. Anti-German hostility was strong in all of the counties around Bethel, but it ost Mennonite elementary and high schools seems to have been particularly bad in Newton.45 In an inter- in Kansas had already taken this step. Ac- view in the Schowalter Oral History Collection on Menno- cording to historian Arlyn John Parish, prior nite experiences during World War I, one Newton man said to the war, about two-thirds of Mennonite el- the anti-German feeling persisted even into the late 1930s. ementary schools in the state’s Western District offered reli- “It was strong, Newton’s been a hotbed here,” he said of Mgion classes in German. By October 1917, that number had the American-German tension; “there have been some red been cut in half. A year later, all German Bible instruction hots here all the time.” In another interview, Albert Unruh had ceased. Because of anti-German attitudes, Parish con- described Mennonites shopping in McPherson rather than tinues, “most Mennonite preparatory schools had to discon- Newton, where the patriotism was too “extreme.”46 tinue all instruction in the language” by late 1918. The gov- The “100 percent Americans” of Newton made clear ernment made clear that Mennonite parochial schools (often their feelings on anything German. Businesses with Ger- taught in German) could remain open, but some patriots in man owners were streaked with yellow paint. Citizens their communities would have preferred them to close.41 put up signs with messages like, “GERMANS: SPEAK Colleges and universities were more varied in their re- THE LANGUAGE OF A CIVILIZED NATION. THE HUN sponse to the war. Fort Hays Kansas Normal School—lo- LANGUAGE WILL BE BARRED EVEN IN HELL.”47 The cated in highly German Ellis County—also eliminated its local paper published a list of “alien enemies” who had German program, but it seems to have done so in a spirit registered with the police chief (the concentration in the more like Baker than Bethel. School records give little insight area was the third largest in the state). A letter from his- into the reasoning behind the decision, but the school itself had no particular German identity, and it does not appear that community members made threats against it.42 On the other hand, three schools that did have a somewhat German identity did not eliminate the German language dur- spoke English) was likely in the single digits. “Distribution of Church Membership by Classes, 1931–1932,” Fort Hays Kansas State College ing the war. Hesston College, Tabor College, and McPherson Bulletin 23 (January 1933): 178. College—all affiliated with Anabaptist churches—were lo- 43. Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 52, 54. 44. McPherson College course catalogues indicated that the school cated within a thirty mile radius of Bethel. Parish suggests continued to offer German instruction throughout the war period. that Hesston’s lack of a German department may have kept In an email to the author, McPherson College librarian Susan Taylor speculates: “Since the heritage of the Church of the Brethren was German, the Brethren were largely pacifists, and the enrollment had a large percent of Brethren students, I doubt if the war would have had a major effect on the teaching of German at that time.” She seems to make 40. “Freunde unserer Schule . . . ,” John Kliewer to the Board of the same argument as Parish: because the townspeople were so highly Directors of Bethel College (translation mine), Sept. 25, 1918, “August– German, the school did not experience anti-German sentiment from the December 1918,” folder 18, box 3, Kliewer Papers. community. Susan Taylor, McPherson College Librarian, email message 41. Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 53–54; Wedel, The to author, February 13, 2009. Story of Bethel College, 287. 45. Anti-German hostility was worst in Marion, McPherson, Harvey, 42. Despite the large Volga German population in Ellis County, the Butler, and Reno Counties—the first three of which had large Mennonite student body at Fort Hays was probably less ethnically German than populations. Juhnke, “Mob Violence”; Wedel, The Story of Bethel College, at Bethel. The Russian Germans in Ellis County were very strongly 235; Wiebe, General Exodus, 15. connected to their German identity, and it was not until much later 46. Interview with Albert Unruh, Unruh folder, box 3, Oral History (the 1930s and 1940s) that many parents began teaching their children Collection; interview with August Epp, Epp folder, box 2, Oral History English as a first language. Glenn G. Gilbert, “The German Language Collection. Wedel commented that some outsiders thought Newton in Ellis County, Kansas,” Heritage of Kansas 9 (Special Issue, 1976): 8. was going over the top with its anti-Germanism. He said businessmen Additionally, statistics from the 1930s indicated that only about one- in nearby cities announced that they would serve the needs of the tenth of Fort Hays students were Catholic. As many Volga Germans Mennonites if Newton did not want their business (Wedel, The Story of in this area would have been Catholic, the percentage of students Bethel College, 237). with a Russian German background in the 1910s (when even fewer 47. Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 52.

Language and Loyalty 145 down the day after the president received a petition requesting that the school eliminate German.49 Kliewer wrote in a letter to the Board of Directors that he was afraid not cooperating with Newton’s patriots would leave the school open to a similar fate. From the perspective of the Newton paper, Bethel College had little reason to worry about its image. The school, it maintained, had not been chastised for teaching German in the college. An article on September 18, 1918, did acknowledge that “there has been some criticism of Bethel College because of the course in German in the academy,” specifically due to the high school’s “tending in a certain sense to segregate such young people and taking them away from the public In 1916 Bethel College offered German language courses, such as this class for 50 elementary school students, with relatively little controversy; indeed, Bethel was high schools.” The problem was not so much essentially bilingual, conducting numerous courses in German. After the United the German language but how it was used to States entered the war, however, pressure mounted on college president John W. avoid assimilation. If, indeed, the primary criti- Kliewer to eliminate German from the college altogether—a demand to which cism was directed at Bethel’s high school and he reluctantly conceded in September 1918, despite considering it pedagogically not the college, President Kliewer did not seem unsound. Photograph number 2011-161, courtesy of the Mennonite Library and to perceive this distinction. Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas. It was the establishment of local loyalty leagues that ultimately led Bethel to become monolingual. A letter to Kliewer from Wil- tory professor C. C. Regier to President Kliewer indicated liam Ewert explained why an upcoming church confer- that the former had been suspected of some form of dis- ence would be held in English: “We found ourselves forced loyalty (though he had no idea why) and that the Board of to take this step, because the so-called Loyalty Leagues Directors had expected him to resign as a result. Another are now being formed almost everywhere and making it letter in the Kliewer correspondence file reported that very unpleasant for those who speak German.”51 School two mutual acquaintances were arrested due to disloy- historian Peter Wedel said that the school was occasionally alty (probably for not buying liberty bonds). The writer threatened, and in order to prevent an attack by patriotic found this frightening. “Whatever they were thought to Newtonians, students sometimes stayed overnight at the have done,” he wrote, “they certainly are not dangerous school’s main building.52 citizens.”48 After the Newton Loyalty League was formed, the Events at nearby schools may have made Bethel espe- group asked Bethel to reduce the amount of German cially nervous. In April 1918, the main building at Tabor spoken and taught at the school. President Kliewer pro- College caught fire; though the cause was never conclu- sively proven, some suspected it to be arson. Similarly, St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Herrington, Kansas—about sixty miles northeast of Newton—mysteriously burned 49. Herman Koester, “Speech on the history of St. Paul’s School,” St. Paul Lutheran Church Documents, Herington Historical Society and Museum, Herington, Kansas; Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War, 218. 50. “Bethel Takes a Sweeping Step,” Newton Weekly Kansan- Republican, September 18, 1918. 51. “Wir fanden uns zu diesem Schritt bezwungen, weil an fast allen 48. “Was immer sie getan haben mögen, gefährliche Bürger sind sie Orten jetzt die sogannten [sic] Loyalty Leagues gebildet waren und gewisz nicht.” H. H. Ewert to John Kliewer (translation mine), April die es demjenigen die Deutsch sprechen sehr unangenehm machen.” 10, 1918, “January–July 1918,” folder 17, box 3, Kliewer Papers; C. C. William Ewert to John Kliewer (translation mine), September 19, 1918, Regier to John Kliewer, March 6, 1918, “January–July 1918,” folder 17, “August–December 1918,” folder 18, box 3, Kliewer Papers. box 3, Kliewer Papers; “Newton Scores Third in Alien Enemies,” Newton 52. Parish, “Kansas Mennonites during World War I,” 54; Wedel, The Weekly Kansan-Republican, April 4, 1918, 8. Story of Bethel College, 236.

146 Kansas History posed that Bethel switch all of its religion courses for- edict but because students rejected all things German as merly taught in German to English. The League debated a matter of national loyalty. Of course, if some students this offer, but requested that the school drop its language at Bethel felt that national loyalty was forced on them, classes too. In order to settle the issue quickly and quietly, students at Baker may have felt like they had to be pa- Kliewer promised to comply, so that “they could simply triotic as well. During the war years, Uncle Sam’s critical say to these worked-up people that Bethel College com- eye was on the entire country—not just its German im- pletely eliminated German for this year.”53 Like Baker migrants. Even native-born citizens (like most students president Lough, Kliewer felt that dropping German at Baker) may have felt they had something to prove. An was “pedagogically . . . a mistake,” but with two strikes easy way to do this was to reject German. against it, Bethel recognized that becoming less German Abandoning German was not necessarily easy for aca- might make it easier to be pacifist. As Kliewer reflected demics to do. But as historian Carol S. Gruber notes, “the years later: “Maybe, to save our religion, we shall have to critical detachment and independence that are the hall- sacrifice our language. . . . The change may be painful, but marks of the scholar could appear to be peacetime luxu- when God’s clock strikes, we must be ready to hear, or we ries” amid the patriotic fervor of the First World War.55 For will suffer loss.” More progressive Bethelites had talked instance, when University of Michigan president Harry for years about downplaying German, pointing out that Hutchins dismissed six of his German professors, he did being Mennonite did not have to go hand-in-hand with so under pressure from the alumni organization and the speaking German.54 During the war, the school’s more tra- state Board of Regents. Historian Clifford Wilcox sug- ditional leaders were forced to accept that letting go of gests Hutchins may have felt a particular need to prove German was the best way to prove their patriotism and his loyalty because he had not immediately required mil- protect the values that transcended both language and na- itary training at the university once the war broke out.56 tional loyalty. No doubt, many other university leaders could have sympathized. cross the state and across the country, the The elimination of German at Baker was indeed differ- German language was a casualty of the First ently motivated than that at Bethel. Even if some Baker World War. Although most efforts targeted students wished to keep from calling into question their German Americans and German instruction identity as truly American, they rarely faced actual threats or in primary and secondary schools, the language as an ac- intimidation. Nonetheless, it is likely that Mennonites were Aademic course of study at colleges and universities also not the only ones who gave up German because they had a suffered from the era’s extreme patriotism. At Bethel, the reputation to protect. Xenophobia is an aggressive strategy, elimination of German was the result of the school’s per- but it is also defensive—a way to protect one’s claim to au- ceived need to demonstrate its loyalty in order to avoid thenticity. Where national loyalty is a national virtue—when ill-treatment by nativists and zealous American citizens. one’s claim to legitimacy can be shaken by declining to buy a At Baker, the German language virtually disappeared liberty bond—subscribing to the legitimating ideology may from classes and clubs, not because of an administrative never be “100 percent” voluntary.

53. “[S]o dass sie den aufgeregten Leuten einfach sagen könnten Bethel College habe für dieses Jahr das Deutsch ganz fallen lassen.” John Kliewer to the Board of Directors (translation mine), Sept. 25, 1918, 55. Carol S. Gruber, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of “August–December 1918,” folder 18, box 3, Kliewer Papers. Kliewer, the Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University however, did not give in to the League’s second request: that Bethel Press, 1975), 5–6. announce it was the first college in Kansas to drop German from its 56. Clifford Wilcox, “World War I and the Attack on Professors of curriculum. Wedel, Story of Bethel College, 237. German at the University of Michigan,” History of Education Quarterly 54. Kliewer, Memoirs, 15, 92; Sprunger, Bethel College of Kansas, 59. 33 (Spring 1993): 80.

Language and Loyalty 147 Dwight David Eisenhower as a senior at Abilene High School, 1909.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 37 (Autumn 2014): 148–163

148 Kansas History Microcosm of Manhood: Abilene, Eisenhower, and Nineteenth-Century Male Identity

by Peter M. Nadeau

I was raised in a little town of which most of you have never heard. But in the West it is a famous place. It is called Abilene, Kansas. We had as our marshal for a long time a man named Wild Bill Hickok. If you don’t know anything about him, read your Westerns more. Now that town had a code, and I was raised as a boy to prize that code. It was: meet anyone face to face with whom you disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an outraged citizenry. If you met him face to face and took the same risks he did, you could get away with almost anything, as long as the bullet was in the front. And today, although none of you has the great fortune, I think, of being from Abilene, Kansas, you live after all by that same code in your ideals and in the respect you give to certain qualities. In this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow. He cannot assassinate you or your character from behind, without suffering the penalties an outraged citizenry will impose.1

resident Dwight Eisenhower’s analogy at a B’nai B’rith dinner in 1953 conflated two modalities of male identity that were in conflict during his youth. While borrowing from the masculine image of the western duel, Eisenhower appropriated the metaphor to extol a more traditional virtuous manhood. The president’s re-characterization of a Wild West gunfight into a Victorian gentleman’s refusal to slander his enemy demonstrated Eisenhower’s consistent aversion to masculine bravado and his esteem for male responsibility. Eisenhower, like his fellow male resi- Pdents of Abilene, Kansas, may have enjoyed stories about cowboy and pioneer prowess, but they conceived of their own identities as males according to the virtues of responsibility, self-control, and maturity. While a hard-bodied toughness flexed its muscle and defined masculinity in urban areas at the turn of the century, nineteenth-century dutiful manhood remained the dominant construct of male identity in rural towns.

Peter Nadeau is a PhD candidate at Oklahoma State University. His research interests include presidential history, masculinity studies, and post–World War II America. He is currently writing a dissertation on Dwight Eisenhower.

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks upon Receiving the America’s Democratic Legacy Award at a B’nai B’rith Dinner in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League,” November 23, 1953, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 797–98.

Microcosm of Manhood 149 Abilene’s reputation as a lawless cow town in the 1860s gave way by the 1880s and 1890s. Rather than having an identity based on saloons and brothels, the Abilene of Eisenhower’s childhood was populated by shopkeepers and wheat farmers, models of manly self-discipline.

his article will examine the dutiful manhood Nineteenth-century manhood focused on the impera- that proliferated in nineteenth-century rural tives of manliness. Manhood required something from towns such as Abilene and how, despite the its members. It carried with it obligations. The success new emphasis placed on masculine power in or failure of participants to meet its requirements struc- the cities, rural areas largely rejected the urban paradigm tured debates over who was truly manly. Men of all races, Tand maintained a traditional emphasis on manly virtue. classes, and stations had obligations to meet. Those who Abilene in the late 1890s provides a miniature example neglected to do so were not just failures, but failures as of the persistence of this model of manhood, and Eisen- men. Descriptions of their responsibilities may vary hower’s upbringing demonstrates how one generation across age, rank, and context, but the understanding that passed this gender conception onto the next. Differentiat- men were culpable went undiminished. In a word, nine- ing understandings of maleness at the turn of the century teenth-century manhood was about duty.3 is critical for understanding the gender transition of the 1890s and the competing constructions of maleness in the twentieth century. Understanding male identity in Abilene gives us a better understanding of gender and restraint. For more on this transition in male gender identity, see relations across nineteenth-century Kansas and their E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity reverberations throughout the nation in the succeeding from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993); 2 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History, 3rd ed. (New century. York: Free Press, 2011); and Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 3. Mapping nineteenth-century manhood is a task that has generated significant disagreement. It is clear that manhood was important 2. Numerous historians have identified a transition in masculinity to the century, but interpretations diverge as to how best to describe in the 1890s wherein urban areas venerated strength and toughness constructions of male identity in the 1800s. In his essay, “Learning About while rural areas held onto an ethic of manhood that preached duty Manhood: Gender Ideals and the Middle-Class Family in Nineteenth

150 Kansas History Dutiful manhood was a nineteenth-century under- ful amusements. The duties Everts enumerated included standing of male identity that emphasized responsibility, self-duties, family duties, patriotic duties, philanthropic self-control, and maturity. Responsibility necessitated duties, and religious duties. Self-control received particu- meeting domestic and occupational obligations while lar focus from Everts because he associated “ungoverned simultaneously demonstrating the virtues the century passion” with “weakness, as well as meanness and deg- deemed essential. Self-control required a man to master radation.” The “sensual appetite is as important as that of his appetites, subdue his urges (particularly the sexual), an irascible temper” to be brought under the “high duty” and avoid the extremes of indulgence or indolence. of self-control. Hard work was a universal duty of all Proper men would mature sufficiently to don their role as men that none should consider wearisome. “In the care of husband and father and provide for one’s own through the body, the culture of the mind, in the discipline of the diligent labor. thoughts, and subjection of the passions . . . show yourself The origins of dutiful manhood extend early in Ameri- a man. Become what man is capable of becoming, and can history. Indentured servants understood their freedom consummate a character which may adorn earth, and was contingent on fulfilling a set of requirements. Puritan shine in the ranks of heaven.” Any man entrusted with writers often conceived of sanctification through an enu- an office “from policeman to president” should faith- meration of obligations: a list of what was required of them fully meet the duties of his office. Everts urged males to for God and for others. Cotton Mather’s Essays to Do Good conform to “the existing system of society” to minimize spelled out appropriate behavior for the man of God. The differences and promote unity. Consequently, the “system Enlightenment corroded the authority the established may be improved, in industrial pursuits, in politics, and churches had in the colonial period, but the embrace of in religion, and not be destroyed.”4 Community confor- rationalism among Unitarians and Universalists accen- mity would be the by-product of discharged duties. tuated a focus on moralism, albeit shorn of Puritan Along with other preachers and moralists of the predestination. Benjamin Franklin’s writings frequently century, Everts issued dire warnings regarding the temp- expounded on enlightened morality. His Poor Richard’s tations of the city and its threat to a youth’s manhood. Almanac and “The Art of Virtue” coherently detailed for the “Cities are the world’s chambers of darkness—its assig- aspiring man the path to success based on virtue and nation places of wickedness and crime. The depraved and responsibility. the designing flock to them from every part of the land The most comprehensive description of dutiful and the globe, to consummate and practice their villanies manhood in the nineteenth century was W. W. Everts’s [sic] unknown and unsuspected.” Cities distinguished Manhood: Its Duties and Responsibilities (1854). Everts was a themselves through “an extreme and artificial levity of Baptist minister who wrote a series of books on the matur- character.” The “anti-domestic” tendencies of urban areas ing male titled “The Voyage of Life.” The series offered demonstrated “an apparent ambition to be free from the volumes on childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. His cares and restraints of the family.” If not for the continual exposition of manhood presented exhortations to fulfill supply of physical, intellectual, and moral character from all the duties of men, resist temptations, and flee youth- the country, then the race would deteriorate and “sink to the lowest effeminacy.” A young man could only preserve his virtue through numerous conflicts and victories. For the city was a battlefield and “the warfare of human life Century America,” E. Anthony Rotundo asserts that the three most rises to its intensest [sic] moral conflicts in a large commu- important ideals of manhood for middle-class men in the century were the masculine achiever, the Christian gentleman, and the masculine primitive. nity.” Only the rural home could nurture a young man’s In Manhood in America: A Cultural History, Michael Kimmel argues earlier virtue for the battle.5 paradigms of genteel patriarch and heroic artisan eventually gave way Central to dutiful manhood was the mastering of to the concept of the self-made man. Kimmel suggests the last has been the most enduring as well as the most fluid concept of male identity in impulses. The responsible man may exhibit an abundance American history. Whereas middle-class white males were most often the of esteemed virtues, work hard, provide for his family, target audience for nineteenth-century literature delineating male duties, poor whites, African Americans, Americans Indians, and immigrants were also evaluated according to dutiful manhood. From the perspective of established whites they were negligent in executing their duties and therefore less manly. For an example see Kimmel, Manhood in America, 91; Rotundo’s essay is in J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and 4. William W. Everts, Manhood: Its Duties and Responsibilities Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (New (Louisville, Ky.: Hull and Brother, 1854), 18, 26, 27, 29, 32, 39, 44, 60. York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). 5. Ibid., 197–98, 202, 273, 282–83.

Microcosm of Manhood 151 and advance in respectability, but if he could not suppress breadwinner earned him “respect and deference from his primitive urges, he compromised his manhood. T. S. wives and children.”8 Arthur asserted an inextricable link between the duties Even as the ethics of manhood endured in rural of manhood and impulse control in Advice to Young Men towns, at the turn of the twentieth century urban areas on Their Duties and Conduct in Life (1849). “Every young began to promote an ethic of masculinity. This con- man can see how great is the responsibility resting upon struct of male identity promoted toughness and feats of him as an individual,” Arthur wrote. “If he commence strength as the delineator of true manliness. Speaking with right principles as his guide, — that is, if in every of this period, Howard Chudacoff writes, “men found action he have regard to the good of the whole, as well themselves engaged in a balancing act between domes- as to his own good, — he will not only secure his own tic masculinity—the still-valued responsibilities to home well-being, but aid in the advancement towards a state and family—and a preoccupation with virility—the com- of order.” Yet responsibility was not enough. “If he . . . petitive independence of the nondomestic male sphere.”9 follow only the impulses of his appetites and passions, Urban males hoped exaggerated notions of power and he will retard the general return to true order, and secure toughness could brake the gender blurring that urbaniza- for himself that unhappiness in the future which is the tion, bureaucratization, and industrialization seemed to invariable consequence of all violations of natural or be accelerating. “The whole generation is womanized,” divine laws.”6 Commentators produced an abundance of lamented Henry James in The Bostonians (1886).10 Others guidebooks in the century to teach men young and old voiced similar concerns about the expansion of women in how to gain mastery over themselves such as William the workplace, higher education, and in the voting booth. Alcott’s The Young Man’s Guide (1848), George Peck’s The Coupled with the confinement of men in new corporate Formation of a Manly Character (1853), and George Burnap’s bureaucracies and a debilitating depression in the 1890s, Lectures to Young Men (1848). The MacGuffey Readers com- anxious American males at the turn of the century were bined pedagogical instruction with clear moral lessons. receptive to redefining their maleness as a collective set of “By gaining the manly strength to control himself,” traits that could be executed and measured. Performing historian Gail Bederman points out, “a man gained masculinity proved far more enticing than subscribing to the strength, as well as the duty, to protect and direct a well-worn ethic of duty. Sports offered the most promi- those weaker than himself: his wife, his children, or his nent delineation of masculine prowess in urban areas. employees.”7 Popular publications helped rally male veneration of specific sports and athletes into a broad fan-base for mas- n addition to responsibility and self-control, nine- culinity. It is no surprise that boxing, brawling, football, teenth-century moralists added maturity as the third baseball, swearing, and exercise enjoyed unprecedented requirement of dutiful manhood. Commentators participation at the turn of the century.11 distinguished the mature man from the child by his Dutiful manhood, however, continued to endure ability to do hard work and provide for his family. The in rural small towns. There were multiple reasons for Ichild was a dependent. Only the mature man could serve its staying power. Outside of large cities, publicized as a breadwinner. Writers described work as exception- athletic contests, publications promoting a muscular phy- ally arduous and a demonstration of sacrifice on behalf of sique, and discretionary income for the theater were not wives and children. Work, according to Robert Griswold, readily available. In small towns pragmatism governed was also “a trade-off: men accepted the responsibility of by a strict morality remained the expedient male iden- supporting a family in exchange for the power, prestige, tity. Dutiful manhood also served as a moral delineator and joy that came with fatherhood.” The struggles of the for rural residents between themselves and the city’s

6. T. S. Arthur, Advice to Young Men on Their Duties and Conduct in Life 8. Robert L. Griswold, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: (Boston: Barton, 1849), 178. Basic Books, 1993), 48–49. 7. William A. Alcott, The Young Man’s Guide, 16th ed. (Boston: T. R. 9. Howard P. Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Marvin, 1846); George Peck, The Formation of a Manly Character: A Series of Subculture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 224–25. Lectures to Young Men (New York: Carlton and Phillips, 1854); George W. 10. Henry James, The Bostonians (New York: Modern Library, Burnap, Lectures to Young Men on the Cultivation of the Mind, the Formation 1956), 343. of Character, and the Conduct of Life (Baltimore, Md.: John Murphy, 1840); 11. James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 12. 1950s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 31.

152 Kansas History to a population that watched with dismay the migration of blacks to northern cities, the expansion of urban tene- ments with non-Anglo immigrants, and the increasingly lurid tales of city life. Rural working- and middle-class families with strong religious convictions found in the Post an affirmation of their values and virtues. Small town residents endeavored to distinguish the hard-working members of their communities from the sloth and vice of the city. David Eisenhower’s acceptance of the magazine in his home spoke to its conservative content. His son Dwight remembered the fights that ensued between his brothers each week to be the first to read its pages.12 The Post reinforced a traditional nineteenth-century gender order. In the 1890s parallel columns titled “Mas- culinities” and “Femininities” appeared on the same page containing maxims, jokes, and anecdotes for each gender that affirmed distinctions even as they poked fun at the behaviors of each. Despite being titled “masculinities,” the designation that described urban manliness, the column actually reinforced rural manhood. The segment regularly preached such axioms as “The man who nurses his wrongs carefully finds that they grow rapidly” and “He is a good man who has done half as much good as he meant David and Ida Eisenhower married in 1885 and had six sons who lived to to do.” Women were instructed to “Speak with calmness adulthood. Eisenhower remembered his parents having a perfect partner- on all occasions, especially in circumstances which tend ship based on nineteenth-century gender roles in which his mother cared to irritate” and to remember, “Women are to be measured, for the home and family and his father was the breadwinner. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas. not by their beauties but by their virtues.” Homey yarns about men losing their authority in marriage, wives who talk excessively, and the power of feminine beauty over the male ego smirked at the incongruities of the sexes new consumerism, promiscuity, and violence. Sport and even while reaffirming their assigned roles.13 boxing promoters were able to capitalize on the expend- The Post viewed the male as the key to domestic able hours that urban workers enjoyed while rural success and gender stability by emphasizing responsible workers completed additional chores. Whereas system- performance of duties, self-regulating the passions, and atization and publication of baseball, football, and boxing working diligently to provide for one’s family. Articles matches could thrive in multiple urban media outlets, on the “Duties and Privileges of Wealth,” “The Making rural towns usually only supported a single newspaper of Character,” “Shall We Return to the Rod?” and “Good devoted to local business. The smaller size of rural towns Conduct and School Study” harkened back to the impor- accommodated a community of accountability whereas tance the concluding century placed on virtuous men.14 A larger population areas struggled to mandate virtue and sermon published by Reverend James McClure in August self-restraint. It was easier for churches and evangeli- 1898 titled “The Safeguard of Manhood” reminded male cal Christianity to hold sway over the smaller and more readers that “a young man cannot let any bodily passion homogenous populations of rural towns than the larger ethnically and religiously diverse populace of the city. The Saturday Evening Post was the most popular publication clinging to the gender values of the fleeting rural 12. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden past. As late as the 1890s, the Post featured the subtitle, City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 34. “The Great Pioneer Family Paper of America.” The maga- 13. Saturday Evening Post, December 11, 1897; November 27, 1897; October 16, 1897; and November 13, 1897. zine’s celebration of common virtues, a traditional gender 14. Ibid., February 26, 1898; September 10, 1898; August 12, 1899; and order, and the working family in small towns appealed December 16, 1899.

Microcosm of Manhood 153 run away with him and expect to be safe” and instructed Abilene, Kansas, rejected the masculine culture of them that “happy the man who early acquires reverence the city because it had already experienced the raw and for purity.”15 The Post’s alignment with the closing centu- contentious ethics of cowboy culture in its early years. ry’s concept of manhood was complete with its celebration Stationed at the terminus of the Chisholm Trail, Abilene of work, male breadwinners, and fleeing childishness was the longed-for destination of many fatigued, thirsty, in such articles as “The Measure of Success” and “Why lonely cattle drivers with a little bit of money in their Young Men Fail.”16 An 1898 piece titled “A Man’s Work in pockets. Abilene prospered for the first time in the late the World” reminded readers of the primacy of work for 1860s when cowpunchers directed their herds to the achieving mature manhood declaring, “no noble career stockyards of the fledgling town and then to the railcars is possible when once the fibre [sic] of manhood, with that would carry them to Chicago and its slaughterhouses. its spirit of hope, and courage, and determination to do The men who lived on the open range practiced what Dee something noble and worthy, has lost its virile strength Garceau calls an “all-male nomadic subculture,” which and purpose.”17 A poem published in 1899 combined all thrived on alternatives to Victorian middle-class domes- three emphases of dutiful manhood: virtue, self-control, tic values and accepted the shame of being condemned and maturity: by preachers and reformers.19 In his memoirs, Eisenhower remarked that his hometown was originally nicknamed How oft in my dreams I go back to the day the “Cow Capital of the World” and that “for a time it When I stood at our old wooden gate, maintained its reputation as the toughest, meanest, And started to school in full battle array, most murderous town of the territory.” The saloons, Well armed with a primer and slate. brothels, and gunfights that gave Abilene’s Texas Street And as the latch fell I thought myself free, its uninhibited reputation outraged and frightened the And gloried, I fear, on the sly, town’s other residents, particularly when their children Till I heard a kind voice that whispered to me: had to walk through its unruliness on their way to the ‘Be a good boy; good-by.’ schoolhouse.20 ‘Be a good boy; good-by.’ It seems Parents and preachers successfully tamed the They have followed me all these years. unchecked masculinity of Abilene after the town no They have given a form to my youthful dreams longer served as the railhead for cattle shippers. The rail- And scattered my foolish fears. road had transformed the sparse settlement of Abilene They have stayed my feet on many a brink, into a raucous terminus at the end of the trail. When Unseen by a blinded eye; the railhead moved to Ellsworth, Newton, and Wichita, For just in time I would pause and think: Abilene lost its purpose and its customers. Entire build- ‘Be a good-boy; good-by.’ ing frames which were previously saloons, brothels, and gambling houses were shipped on railcars south and Oh, brother of mine, in the battle of life, west, commemorated by the phrase “hell on wheels” to Just starting or nearing its close, describe the transport of Abilene’s wickedness. In addi- This motto aloft, in the midst of the strife, tion, the success of winter wheat planted in Abilene’s Will conquer wherever it goes. surrounding prairie spurred Dickinson County’s passage of a herding law by the county commissioners in 1872. Mistakes you will make, for each of us errs, The herding or fencing law prohibited the free ranging of But, brother, just honestly try cattle on land that was now more valuable for growing To accomplish your best. In whatever occurs, wheat and needed to be protected from trampling long- ‘Be a good boy; good-by.’18 horns. The change in Abilene was almost immediate. The

19. Dee Garceau, “Nomads, Bunkies, Cross-Dressers, and Family 15. Ibid., August 20, 1898. Men: Cowboy Identity and the Gendering of Ranch Work,” in Across the 16. Ibid., December 3, 1898; October 7, 1899; and November 18, 1899. Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American West, eds. Matthew Basso, 17. Ibid., December 3, 1898. Laura McCall, and Dee Garceau (New York: Routledge, 2001), 149–54. 18. Ibid., September 23, 1899. 20. Eisenhower, At Ease, 65.

154 Kansas History in the old dime novels,” wrote a family biographer.23 Working- and middle-class males prevented Abilene’s disappearance as a temporary trail town through a devotion to work, church, and home. Employment at local businesses and farms consumed the majority of a male’s waking hours, and church functions and domestic chores disbursed the rest. Across the West, towns such as Abilene, which briefly profited from the wild frontier masculinity of pioneers and cattle drovers, were gradually abandoned or managed to survive by adopting the domestic morality of Victorian gentility. The cowboy code governed the open range; the Bible the respectable town.24

bilene’s rural identity was pivotal in developing the imperatives of virtuous manhood. Settlers who had been converted by evan- gelical revivals or had adopted the morality of eastern Victorian elites now outnumbered the town’s Aforerunners. Working- and middle-class males who aspired to the wealth of eastern elites reflected their aspirations in their efforts to conduct themselves as estab- Thomas J. Smith, Abilene’s town marshal, was killed in 1870 lished Victorian gentlemen even if their salaries were not during an attempt to bring two men accused of murder to justice. equivalent. Manual laborers and white-collar workers Commemoration of Smith’s death in the early 1900s showed the desire who disparaged the cities for their crime, corruption, of Abilene’s residents to emphasize duty and the rule of law, instead of and immorality viewed the farms, shops, and mechani- the town’s wild past. cal plants of towns as character-building for the arduous demands they placed on aspiring men. The endless tasks of the farm, chores around the house, and community Abilene Chronicle reported in May 1872 that “the town of projects needing assistance kept a young man from idle- Abilene is as quiet as any village in the land. Business is ness, consumed the hours of his day, and steered him not as brisk as it used to be during the cattle season—but away from the tempting amusements of the city. Dwight the citizens have the satisfaction that Hell is more than Eisenhower acknowledged as much when he wrote in his sixty miles away.”21 retirement that “in the transformation from a rural to an Into hell’s void a more domesticated gender order urban society, children are . . . robbed of the opportunity replaced masculine license by the wheat farmers, mechan- to do genuinely responsible work.” Even while president ics, shopkeepers, and tradesmen who stayed behind. of Columbia University he viewed New York City “as a “They might have missed their chance at developing a place to live, seemed to me an environment out of which, metropolitan Sodom, but the people settled down into only with difficulty and exceptional effort, much good occupations that made for a slower but steadier growth,” could come.” He acknowledged that the “farm boy and Dwight Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs.22 “These tenement boy are one at heart” and that parental love Kansans were religious, dedicated, hardworking, folk— quite unlike the bold, blazing, he-man types featured

23. John McCallum, Six Roads from Abilene: Some Personal Recollections of Edgar Eisenhower (Seattle, Wash.: Wood and Reber, 1960), 22. 24. “For all its humor, sexual license, alternative relationships, and 21. Jim Hoy, “Joseph G. McCoy and the Creation of the Mythic challenge to Victorian mores, over time cowboy culture shifted with American West” and Thomas D. Isern, “Theodore C. Henry: Frontier changes in the cattle industry. As family ranches gradually replaced Booster and Nostalgic Old Settler” in John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and open-range herding, cowboys traded the masculine privileges of the Shakers in Kansas History, ed. Virgil W. Dean (Lawrence: University Press margins for the class privileges of the mainstream.” Dee Garceau, of Kansas, 2006). “Nomads, Bunkies, Cross-Dressers, and Family Men,” in Basso, McCall, 22. Eisenhower, At Ease, 65. and Garceau, Across the Great Divide, 163.

Microcosm of Manhood 155 exists in both homes, but he considered a rural town a Abilene’s dutiful men borrowed from the closing nine- far better incubator for male character than squalid urban teenth-century’s gender order to restore stability. This neighborhoods. Abilene as “a microcosm of rural life at traditional formulation delineated gender differences that time” was a far better environment for nurturing even as it extolled their complementary responsibilities. dutiful men.25 Boys were trained in chores and outdoor manual tasks, The collective commemoration of one of the town’s completing minimal schooling until they abandoned the more famous lawmen revealed the eagerness of Abilene’s classroom completely to begin work on a local farm. Girls residents to escape its wild past. Thomas J. Smith was remained in school longer and became acquainted with appointed town marshal in 1869 for his reputation as a housework, cooking, and childcare as they approached fearless law officer and willingness to confront frontier their high school graduations. Such gendered expecta- toughs with his fists or guns. Smith incurred the hatred tions created a sex disparity at Abilene High where girls of Texas Street’s cowboys for successfully enforcing a outnumbered boys two to one. Dwight Eisenhower’s “no guns in town limits” law, overwhelming two large graduating class numbered twenty-five girls to nine men with his fists, and surviving two assassination boys. Eisenhower later attributed this disparity to the attempts. When Smith attempted to serve a warrant small community’s notion that education would not yield against two local farmers accused of murder, the outlaws “practical results” and “it was a male-run society and overwhelmed him in a gunfight. He was shot, struck schools were predominantly feminine.” Eisenhower’s with a rifle butt, and decapitated with an axe. Outraged observation in his memoirs that “Abilene was in those residents of Abilene launched a search party for Smith’s days just another rural town, undistinguishable from murderers and brought them to justice. Smith was given a scores of others dotting the plains” no doubt included a public funeral in which the majority of Abilene’s citizens consistency in gender relations common to the nineteenth followed behind the horse-pulled hearse to a cemetery century.27 north of town. Smith was buried with a wooden headstone Abilene’s daily newspaper reflected the town’s and a small fence surrounding the grave. Yet as Abilene embrace of a traditional gender order and endorsement prospered from local wheat crops, Smith’s grave fell into of virtuous manhood. Like many small-town papers, disrepair and became so overgrown that it was almost com- portions of the Abilene Daily Reflector were reprints from pletely lost. Almost three decades later a local resident, J. B. sections crafted in large cities. Local editors still decided, Edwards, identified the grave and had the cast iron casket though, what they included in their dailies and the papers disinterred and moved to a more prominent place in the spoke to local residents’ values. The Reflector catered to its town’s cemetery. On Memorial Day 1904, a ceremony was patrons’ attention to virtue by emphasizing the character held honoring Abilene’s famous marshal and a large stone qualities of local merchants and tradesmen. In an 1894 was placed over his grave. A bronze plaque attached to the advertisement for G. C. Sterl & Co., shoppers were told stone demarcated Smith’s final resting place and Abilene’s “‘The Strong-arm Man’ in the Clothing Business Today rejection of lawless masculinity in favor of a more dutiful is the Value-Giver, Promise-Keeper.” The paper informed manhood. The plaque read: readers in July 1901 that Landes’s barbershop offered “cleanliness, skill and gentlemanly treatment.” During THOMAS J. SMITH a quarantine on public meetings in 1901, the paper MARSHAL OF ABILENE, 1870 remarked that “Abilene men have spent more whole eve- DIED A MARTYR TO DUTY NOV. 2ND, 1870 nings at home this week than in any week for a decade.” A FEARLESS HERO OF FRONTIER DAYS The paper anticipated that “the men ought to acquire WHO IN COWBOY CHAOS some good habits.” The Reflector also extolled male self- ESTABLISHED THE SUPREMACY OF LAW26 control, offering cures for drunkenness, chewing tobacco, and an unregulated tongue. Boys aspiring to mature manhood could read about the onset of adult responsibilities at the end of schooling, the Christian character and work ethic of deceased residents, and encounter a bevy of

25. Eisenhower, At Ease, 33, 53–54, 76. 26. Verckler, Cowtown-Abilene, 41–50; Nyle H. Miller and Joseph W. Snell, Great Gunfighters of the Kansas Cowtowns, 1867–1886 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 415–19. 27. Eisenhower, At Ease, 65, 99.

156 Kansas History In small towns like Abilene, men engaged in physical labor and children helped on family farms. The Eisenhowers’ home life deviated from the nineteenth-century ideal, because Ida and David did not have any daughters. Consequently, the Eisenhower boys performed some domestic chores that might have been delegated to girls, such as cooking or cleaning. Here, Dwight Eisenhower’s brothers, Milton and Earl, are feeding the family’s chickens. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

advertisements for custom-fitting suits. Eisenhower later with a religious devotion to principled manhood. “He remarked about the Reflector, “there is no other paper in was inflexible and expected everyone to have the same the world that I read for so many years at a stretch as I standards as he had,” wrote his granddaughter.29 “He did that one.”28 was an inflexible man with a stern code,” his son Edgar later explained. “He expected everyone else to conform he Eisenhowers were one of the many rural to his standards and high ideals, even people he read working-class families with strong religious about in the newspapers. Even historical characters. He convictions common in Abilene and in many wanted people to be neat and decent and self-respecting, non-urban areas across the country at the begin- the way he tried to be.” Edgar described his mother as “a ning of the twentieth century. The Eisenhower parents’ versatile woman” whose domestic roles included “cook, Tconception of gender roles reflected the traditional divi- baker, laundress, scrubwoman, dressmaker, milliner, sion of the sexes into a male breadwinner and a female valet, lady’s maid, waitress, and chambermaid.” She was homemaker. Yet despite their affinity with other rural also the family doctor, nurse, preacher, teacher, lawyer, families, variances with the nineteenth century’s gender judge, jury, policeman, banker, accountant, and carpen- ideals existed in the Eisenhower home. ter.30 Despite Ida’s profound influence on each of her Although David and Ida Eisenhower had markedly sons, it was clear that David was the head of the house. contrasting personalities, their commitment to nineteenth- Dwight later concluded that such a clear delineation of century gender roles provided stability in their marriage and parenting. David undergirded his stern demeanor

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 585. 28. Abilene (Kans.) Daily Reflector, May 25, 1901; December 15, 1894; 29. Kaye Eisenhower Morgan, The Eisenhower Legacy: A Tribute to July 29, 1901; September 4, 1890; January 21, 1898; January 2, 1890; Ida Stover Eisenhower and David Jacob Eisenhower (Mesa, Ariz.: Roesler September 17, 1894; June 7, 1911; May 10, 1898; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Enterprises Publishing, 2005), 88. “Remarks at the National Editorial Association Dinner,” June 22, 1954, 30. McCallum, Six Roads from Abilene, 31, 35–36.

Microcosm of Manhood 157 Dwight Eisenhower credited his parents with instilling in him and his brothers a sense of manly self-discipline, which shaped their future actions. This family photograph from 1902 captured the idyllic image of Eisenhower’s moral background. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

roles explained the absence of quarreling and peace in the Determined to satisfy appetites while avoiding overin- home. “Father was the breadwinner, Supreme Court, and dulgence, Ida would give her boys apples to hold them Lord High Executioner. Mother was tutor and manager of over until mealtime. The pacifism that Ida inculcated our household. Their partnership was ideal.”31 from the River Brethren spurred her to label Dwight’s choice of a military career as “not of God, but of Satan.” da was equally determined as her husband to infuse Yet the future general acknowledged during World War a dutiful manhood into her six sons through reli- II, “if I have done or will do anything in the service of my gious discipline. Family lore related that Ida had country during this conflict, it will be because of the prin- disciplined herself enough when she was younger ciples of life and conduct that she drilled into all her sons to memorize a startling 1,365 Bible verses in six months. during all the years they lived under her roof.”33 I“She deeply believed in self-discipline and she preached Dwight recalled the primacy assigned to work in it constantly,” Dwight recalled. “Each of us should behave Abilene and how esteeming its value above any amuse- properly not because of the fear of punishment but ments or distractions represented one of the greatest because it was the right thing to do. Such a philosophy differences between American society at the end of his was a trifle idealistic for a platoon of growing boys but life compared to during his childhood. He wrote a fun- in later years we came to understand her ideas better.”32 damental change had occurred in attitudes towards the

31. Eisenhower, At Ease, 31. 32. Ibid., 32. 33. Morgan, The Eisenhower Legacy, 96, 114, 143.

158 Kansas History Dwight Eisenhower and his brothers remembered hard work during their childhood, but they also enjoyed participating in outdoor activities such as camping and hunting. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

temporal role of man, “that role was once expressed in a and considered withdrawing, observing a street sweeper single word: Work.” He recalled the minimal expectations and pondering the prospect of a lifetime of manual labor residents of Abilene had for education. Primary school- motivated him to complete his degree.35 ing informed students about civic problems, but “beyond The absence of daughters in the Eisenhower family that, schools served to prepare the student for little more was among the variances from the century’s domes- than the ordinary round of jobs. Physical work was tic ideal. Consequently, the boys took on an unusual done by almost every male.”34 Edgar recalled his mother number of domestic tasks including cooking, dishwash- exhorting her boys “you must do like your father and ing, laundering, and cleaning. Not all rural homes were work hard if you want to make a success of your lives.” as religious as that of the Eisenhowers, but most were All of the Eisenhower sons adopted the demanding work strongly influenced and even shaped by the nineteenth- ethic of their father, but each of them did so apart from century Christianity that buttressed contemporary manual labor. Edgar later remarked that when he was understandings of sex roles. Not all rural families lived in struggling in law school at the University of Michigan such a small community as Abilene, but enough distinc-

34. Eisenhower, At Ease, 79–80. 35. McCallum, Six Roads from Abilene, 58, 94.

Microcosm of Manhood 159 Future promoters of Eisenhower’s political career tried to capitalize on the nostalgia of Eisenhower’s upbringing, but Dwight believed that most American children had similar experiences. Eisenhower (far right) and his friends are pictured here in 1907 at Brown’s Park. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

tion still remained between towns and cities at the end of were full and purposeful. There was plenty of fun and the century to distinguish competing notions of manliness. good old-fashioned pranks. We played games that kept us Neither did all rural small town families match the Eisen- happy and exuberant. But behind all of this activity was howers according to economic position. Dutiful manhood a stern daily routine of constant discipline and the solid crossed class, religious, and regional demarcations, though exposure to the principles of life and the values that were less evenly between urban and non-urban spaces. planted and developed in our minds.”36 Although future promoters of his candidacy capitalized on the nostalgia of wight Eisenhower’s childhood transpired in a his childhood, Dwight believed that his upbringing was context of dutiful manhood. Concurrent to the not unusual and that many of the nation’s earliest settlers significant change occurring in cities regard- had upbringings similar to his own in Abilene.37 ing male identity, Abilene and the Eisenhower home still preached a traditional notion of manliness that Dsurvived in rural working-class homes. His brother Edgar 36. Ibid., 49. later wrote of their childhood, “our lives as youngsters 37. Eisenhower, At Ease, 51.

160 Kansas History Eisenhower and his brothers embraced sports including baseball and football as a means of learning manly self-discipline. Eisenhower is in the back row, third from the left in this 1910 photograph of his high school football team. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

While urban areas increasingly employed sports to High School Athletic Association. The association col- demonstrate masculine prowess, Dwight conceived of lected dues to purchase sporting goods which most of athletics as an arena to sharpen manly character. Athlet- the kids could not afford. In his senior year the members ics were the primary passion of Dwight during his high elected him president. Joe Howe, who edited the Dickinson school years. He played baseball and football at Abilene County News and attended most of Abilene High’s games, High School. He was proud of his school’s undefeated later wrote that Dwight “had self-assurance but never in football season his junior year. When the Abilene High all my contact with him did he ever show any conceit. baseball team played the University of Kansas freshman He resented this in other boys more than anything else. team in 1908, Dwight misjudged a fly ball and allowed In fact, he would dislike a boy for being conceited much it to go over his head. His team ended up losing, seven more than for something he had done.” He also insisted to three, and later he said that he carried the regret over on fair play even in football. “Eisenhower would experi- the error for a long time. He helped organize the Abilene ence a surge of anger when he detected someone, even

Microcosm of Manhood 161 one of his own teammates, violating the rules,” historian tary lack of self-control, but recalling the incident many Stephen Ambrose wrote. “If it were an opponent who was years later Dwight sympathized with his father for pun- cheating, he would block or tackle him just a bit harder; ishing Edgar for his truancy. Dwight conjectured that his if one of his side was guilty, he would sharply reprimand father was fearful Edgar would “seriously damage all the player.”38 the years of life ahead” by neglecting his education and end up as “an unhappy handyman in Kansas,” which of wight’s childhood also contained several course was essentially his father’s job at the Belle Springs lessons in the importance of self-control and creamery.40 the consequences of its neglect. When he was David and Ida deliberately refused influencing their ten, his parents prohibited him from going sons to choose a particular career. The Eisenhower trick-or-treating one Halloween with his two older broth- parents probably resented their own parents trying to Ders. Despite pleading and begging his parents to let him steer them towards farming and intentionally avoided go, his parents’ decision was final. Dwight flew into an making similar demands on their own children. As long uncontrollable rage, ran into the yard, and started punch- as their sons demonstrated hard work and mature char- ing a tree stump with his fists. His tantrum continued acter, David and Ida would not reject their sons’ career until his father grabbed him and demanded Dwight get a choices. Despite initial reservations about Edgar’s choice hold of himself. With bloodied and bruised hands, he was to pursue law at the University of Michigan, David sup- sent to bed where he sobbed in anger. When his mother ported his son’s decision. Even more egregious, Dwight’s eventually came in and rubbed salve on his knuckles and decision to accept his appointment to West Point vio- bandaged his welts, she spoke to him about his temper lated Ida’s staunch pacifism. His mother did not block and soothed his damaged pride. “He that conquereth his Dwight’s leaving, but as he walked in his suit to the train own soul is greater than he who taketh a city,” she quoted station in Abilene his brother Milton recalled their mother from the Bible. She pointed out the consequence of his retreating to her bedroom and hearing her sob behind the rage and bitterness was only injury to himself. He would closed door. never gain mastery over his life if he could not master his One month before Dwight walked to the station, the passions. Recounting the event in his memoirs, Dwight Abilene Daily Reflector ran an advertisement for Harry C. identified the conversation “as one of the most valuable Litts, a local Abilene clothes merchant. The ad featured moments of my life.”39 a boy with a drum and was entitled, “For the Boy’s Eisenhower recalled that when he was twelve his father Last Days at School.” The ad encouraged consumers to discovered Edgar was skipping school and working for fix their child up in an “Xtragood” suit, the uniform of the town doctor in order to earn some extra money. His mature manhood, for his last days of school. For “he will father began to violently whip Edgar with a leather strap appreciate it and will some day be a president of a rail- in the family barn. Frightened by the unusual intensity road or president of the U.S. You don’t know.”41 of his father’s anger, Dwight screamed loudly from the Dutiful manhood would continue to shape Dwight barn hoping that his mother would come running. When Eisenhower’s concept of manliness for the rest of his life. she did not, Dwight endeavored to intervene and prevent The lessons in dutiful manhood he imbibed in Abilene his father from applying further blows on his brother. were only reinforced in his education at West Point, Dwight tried to grab at his father’s arm until his father where the motto remains, “Duty, Honor, Country.” A turned towards him and exclaimed, “Oh, do you want lifetime military career confirmed the value he placed some of the same. What’s the matter with you, anyway?” on responsibility, discipline, self-restraint, and maturity. “I don’t think anyone ought to be whipped like that . . . Eisenhower only assented to run for the presidency when not even a dog,” Dwight protested. his supporters convinced him it was his duty and his Dwight’s father dropped the strap and walked away. administration is remembered for its restrained spend- Father and son were both surprised by David’s momen- ing, responsible handling of crises, and determination to restrict the growth of the military-industrial complex.

38. Francis T. Miller, Eisenhower: Man and Soldier (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1944), 80; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–1952 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 1:34. 40. Ibid., 36–37. 39. Eisenhower, At Ease, 51–52. 41. Abilene Daily Reflector, May 19, 1911.

162 Kansas History Despite the new emphasis on masculine power in the cities at the turn of the twentieth century, Eisenhower embraced the more traditional dutiful manhood of the nineteenth century throughout his military and political careers. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Dutiful manhood itself quickly fell into disfavor as an idealized model for ordering maleness. Although amidst the turbulence of the early twentieth century. The dutiful manhood never again enjoyed the hegemony of urban veneration of hard-bodied masculinity mocked the previous century, its imperatives encoded Ike and his the prudishness of rural males and would eventually generation of men echoing into the next century.42 win the argument in the roaring twenties. Yet dutiful manhood would reappear in “the greatest generation” as the impetus to survive the Depression, storm Nor- mandy’s beaches, and settle the suburbs after the war. 42. Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under Threatened with nuclear annihilation, racial upheaval, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is just the most recent claimant to dutiful manhood. His memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New working women, and challenges to American supremacy York: Knopf, 2014), details his fulfillment of duty even as it decries the abroad, the nation’s males looked back to rural simplicity failure of others in government to do so.

Microcosm of Manhood 163 Saint Louis Cardinals right-hander Mike Torrez. Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Torrez family.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 37 (Autumn 2014): 164–179

164 Kansas History The Early Life and Career of Topeka’s Mike Torrez, 1946–1978: Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas

by Jorge Iber

aseball has, over its grand history, generated indelible moments that have tagged, fairly or unfairly, certain players as heroes or scapegoats for either success or catastrophic failure at critical moments. The death of Bobby Thomson, the man who hit the now-tainted home run known as the “shot heard round the world” to win the playoff between the Giants and the Dodgers in 1951, and the publication of an autobiography by the “goat” in that confrontation, Dodger hurler Ralph Branca, is but one vivid example of such tales.1 A similar event has Bties to Kansas and to the historical narrative of its Mexican American populace. The pitch of interest here was thrown by Topeka native Mike Torrez (then playing for the Boston Red Sox) to New York Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent at Fenway Park on October 2, 1978. While Dent’s round-tripper did not end the contest, it sparked the Bronx Bombers to an improbable 5–4 victory, culminating a furious rally to a division pennant.

Jorge Iber, who received his PhD from the University of Utah, is a full professor of history and an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas Tech University. His principal research focuses on the social and historical significance of Latinos in U.S. sports. Over the past decade, he has published extensively on this topic in a variety of scholarly journals. He is the author/editor/co-author/co-editor of six books, including most recently: More Than Just Peloteros: Sport and U.S. Latino Communities (2015); Latino American Wrestling Experience: Over 100 Years of Wrestling Heritage in the United States, with Lee Maril (e-book 2014); and Latinos in U.S. Sports: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance (2011). He is currently working on a full-length biography on Mike Torrez as well as a picture book on the role of baseball in the lives of Mexican Americans in the state of Texas.

1. For the most recent treatments of this story, see Joshua Prager, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2008) and Ralph Branca, A Moment in Time: An American Story of Baseball, Heartbreak and Grace (New York: Scribner, 2011). For an overview of “scapegoats” in MLB history, please see Christopher Bell, Scapegoats: Baseballers Whose Careers Are Marked by One Fateful Play (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2002), 62–87.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 165 he purpose of this essay is to provide a brief Spanish-speakers in Kansas have generated insight outline of the life and early career of Mike Torrez, into various historical aspects of their history (labor, the son and grandson of Mexicano railroad religion, and education, for example), but one area that workers, and to examine the role athletics played has been almost completely ignored is the role of sport in his personal success. Additionally, the piece provides in the lives of Spanish-speaking communities. Again, a Tan overview of the significant role of sport in the day-to- quick perusal of the pages of Kansas History reveals that day life of the inhabitants of the Oakland barrio section many articles have been published concerning sport, but of Topeka. Finally, it contends that sport is a critical, yet none has focused on Latinos/as. Recent essays include understudied, component of life among many of the a biography of a legendary official, an overview of Wilt Sunflower State’s Spanish-speakers, serving as a means Chamberlain’s Jayhawk years, and the histories of the to uplift ethnic pride and maintain cultural identity.2 development of six- and eight-man football on the plains, The story of Michael Augustine Torrez provides an interracial baseball in Wichita, and the significance of entry into three important strands of Mexican American the Haskell Institute’s football team to Native American history. First, his story can be part of a growing body identity.5 This article on Mike Torrez and his community of biographical literature now being generated about is in line with arguments articulated and discussed in this group. Recent works include accounts of a federal such works and follows the call made by Rita G. Napier judge, an academician, a medical doctor/civil rights in “Rethinking the Past, Reimagining the Future” more activist, and a mayor of El Paso.3 Second, a perusal of than a decade ago. At the very end of her piece, Napier the pages of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains noted that increasing the awareness of “other” groups (and other journals) reveals a not-insignificant number in the state’s history would make it possible to include of items dealing directly with Mexican Americans’ “different stories, new actors, fresh images of Kansas. . . . role in the history of the state. While there still is not a This new knowledge has yarn of many colors with which single, comprehensive study of this topic, a great deal of to weave our future.”6 spade work has been done.4 Third, projects concerning The Torrez family came to Kansas seeking refuge from the violence of the Mexican Revolution as well as an

2. There is a growing body of literature, both academic and popular, detailing the history of Latinos/as in U.S. sport. See Jorge Iber et al., Books, 2008), 115–33; Tomas R. Jimenez, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Latinos in U.S. Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance Americans, Immigration and Identity (Berkeley: University of California (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 2011) and Jorge Iber and Samuel Press, 2010); Daniel E. Aguilar, “Mexican Immigrants in Meatpacking O. Regalado, eds., Mexican Americans and Sports: A Reader on Athletics Areas of Kansas: Transition and Acquisition of Cultural Capital” (PhD and Barrio Life (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007) diss., Kansas State University, 2008); Russell Wayne Graves, “Garden as starting points for this literature. For the popular literature, see for City: The Development of an Agricultural Community on the Great example Paul Cuadros, A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Plains” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2004); Kathie Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America (New York: Harper Hinnen, “Mexican Immigrants to Hutchinson, Kansas, 1905–1940: Collins Publishers, 2006) and Steve Wilson, The Boys from Little Mexico: A How a Temporary Haven Became Home” (master’s thesis, Southwest Season Chasing the American Dream (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 2010). Missouri State University, 1998); and Domingo Ricart, “Just Across the 3. Louise Ann Fisch, All Rise: Reynaldo G. Garza, the First Mexican Tracks: Report on a Survey of Five Mexican Communities in the State American Federal Judge (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, of Kansas (Emporia, Florence, Newton, Wichita, Hutchinson)” (Report, 1996); Felix D. Almaraz, Jr., Knight Without Armor: Carlos Eduardo University of Kansas, 1950). Castaneda, 1896–1958 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 5. Larry R. Gerlach, “Ernie Quigley: An Official for All Seasons,” 1999); Ignacio M. Garcia, Hector P. Garcia: In Relentless Pursuit of Justice Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 33 (Winter 2010–2011): 218– (Houston, Tex.: Arte Publico Press, 2003); and Mario T. Garcia, The 39; Aram Goudsouzian, “‘Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain?’: The Making of a Mexican American Mayor: Raymond L. Telles of El Paso (El Paso: Kansas Years of Wilt the Stilt,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Texas Western Press, 1998). Plains 28 (Autumn 2005): 150–73; Christopher H. Lee, “Adaptation on 4. See, among others, Henry J. Avila, “Immigration and Integration: the Plains: The Development of Six-Man and Eight-Man Football in The Mexican American Community in Garden City, Kansas, 1900– Kansas,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 12 (Winter 1989– 1950,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 20 (Spring 1997): 1990): 192–201; Jason Pendleton, “Jim Crow Strikes Out: Interracial 22–37; Michael J. Broadway, “Meatpacking and Its Social and Economic Baseball in Wichita, Kansas, 1920–1935,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Consequences for Garden City, Kansas in the 1980s,” Urban Anthropology Central Plains 20 (Summer 1997): 86–101; Keith A. Sculle, “‘The New and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 19 (Winter Carlisle of the West’: Haskell Institute and Big-Time Sports, 1920–1932,” 1990): 321–44; Donald D. Stull, “‘I Come to the Garden’: Changing Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 17 (Autumn 1994): 192–208; Ethnic Relations in Garden City, Kansas,” Urban Anthropology and and Kim Warren, “‘All Indian Trails Lead to Lawrence, October 27 to Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 19 (Winter 30, 1926’: American Identity and the Dedication of Haskell Institute’s 1990): 303–20; Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway, “Meatpacking Football Stadium,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 30 and Mexicans on the High Plains: From Minority to Majority in Garden (Spring 2007): 2–19. City, Kansas,” in Immigrants Outside Megalopolis: Ethnic Transformation 6. Rita G. Napier, “Rethinking the Past, Reimagining the Future,” in the Heartland, ed. Richard C. Jones (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 24 (Autumn 2001): 247.

166 Kansas History (Mike’s father, born June 26, 1911), arrived just months after his father’s trek across the Rio Grande. Mariano spent several years living in Kansas, supporting his family and returning to Mexico whenever possible. According to Juan’s younger brother Louis, sometime in 1917 Mariano’s supervisor at the Santa Fe Railroad advised the young Mexican to bring his spouse and children north. The family lived in Pauline until around 1926 or 1927 then moved to an area just outside of the Oakland neighborhood, taking up residence at 118 North East Chandler Street. Louis recalled that Juan actually went quite far in regard to educational attainment and attended school until around age sixteen. However, it appears that by the mid-1920s, he was no longer interested in academic pursuits, and Mariano proffered his son a simple choice between school and work. As a result of this bit of encouragement, Juan lied about his age and was hired by the Santa Fe.8 The early life story of Mary, Mike’s mother, and her family is comparable. Her Mary Torrez (standing in back) is pictured here with her parents, Calixto and father, Calixto Martinez, hailed from San Concepcion Martinez, and cousin Concepcion. As a child, Mary worked in the fields Julian de Logos, Jalisco, and was born on and did housework for other families in Topeka in addition to helping at home. Courtesy of the Torrez family. October 13, 1892. He married Concepcion Marquez, who was born August 9, 1894, on October 9, 1910. The couple had eleven offspring (five boys and six girls), with the opportunity to earn a better living. In many ways, their majority of the Martinez children being American citizens, story is representative of many tens of thousands of their though Mary was born in Mexico on May 25, 1921. The fellow countrymen in the first decades of the twentieth family crossed into the U.S. in April 1922. Initially, the century.7 Mariano Torrez (Mike’s paternal grandfather) Martinezes lived on 235 South East Klein Street, just three was born in Leon, Guanajuato, on July 26, 1890, and or four blocks from the Torrez domicile.9 crossed into the U.S. via Laredo, Texas, on March 3, 1911. During childhood, Mary lived as most of her siblings There he was recruited by an enganchista (labor recruiter) and other children in the area did, working the fields and eventually moved to Pauline, Kansas, to work as a when the family traveled, cleaning houses for more well- railroad laborer. By the time he arrived in the Sunflower to-do Topeka residents, and having little opportunity to State, Mariano was married to Refugio Valdivia (born attend school. In a 2012 interview, Mrs. Torrez noted that August 23, 1891). The pair had a total of ten children she did manage to go to school in Kansas for roughly (five boys and five girls) and one of them, Juan P. Torrez

8. These materials come from a family genealogy provided by John 7. There is a plethora of materials that cover the arrival and work Torrez. A copy of these materials is in the author’s possession. history of Mexicans into various parts of the American West and 9. Torrez family interviews, conducted by Jorge Iber, August Midwest. A good, basic textbook with which to commence a reading of 2012, copies of interviews in author’s possession. Family members this literature would be Jorge Iber and Arnoldo De Leon, Hispanics in the interviewed included Mike Torrez, John Torrez, Louis Torrez, Maria American West (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2006). Torrez, and others.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 167 Although they never formally dated because Mary’s parents disliked American courtship practices, Juan Torrez began seeing Mary after his younger brother Louis spoke to her at community events. Courtesy of the Torrez family.

three years, but had difficulty learning English and how interactions with his future sister-in-law and other young to read. Another element that limited Mary’s schooling people in the barrio. Juan’s younger sibling was very jovial was her responsibilities at home. Because her older and outgoing, and when traversing the neighborhood he sister Panfila had married and she was the second oldest often engaged in friendly chats with Mary. daughter, by age fourteen Mary produced the family’s The Oakland neighborhood, in the shadows of the daily tally of tortillas each morning. Until she completed Santa Fe work yard, was financially poor but rich and that task, her parents would not permit Mary to leave vibrant in Mexicano culture. In addition to the familias for school. Ultimately, it was determined to simply keep keeping alive their traditions, beginning in 1914, Catholic the young woman at home and end all efforts regarding priests were welcomed to celebrate masses, weddings, formal education.10 Calixto and Concepcion were quite baptisms, and funerals. The local Diocese established a traditional and strict, and worked diligently to ensure parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, that year (housed in a Mary did not become too “Americanized” (particularly in small retail store), with a second, more permanent facility regard to dating practices) as she entered her later teenage (including a school) constructed in 1921. The Our Lady years. Such efforts, however, did not prevent Mary and of Guadalupe School eventually reached an enrollment Juan from meeting. The initial connections between the of 275 students by the early 1930s.11 In 1933 through Martinez and Torrez families started as a result of Louis’s the efforts of the congregation, the church became the

10. Ibid. 11. Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta Mexicana, 1974, brochure, 2–5.

168 Kansas History young lady nearby, Juan started visiting the area around 235 South East Klein Street. He was quickly smitten. Mary recalled that her future spouse complimented both her attire and physical beauty, and eventually he left notes declaring an interest in becoming better acquainted. Given her difficulty with reading, Louis usually read his older brother’s messages for her. Not surprisingly, Calixto rebuffed Juan’s request to court formally.13 There matters stood until one morning in April 1938. As usual, Mary awoke early to begin making the quota of tortillas. That day, however, the couple met clandestinely and took off to nearby Kansas City, where they wed on April 28, never having been on an actual date. Juan and Mary returned to Topeka and ultimately consecrated their marriage at their local parish. The Torrezes had a total of eight children: three boys (John, Mike, and Richard) and five girls (Ernestine, Evelyn, Mickey, Stella, and Yolanda), with Mike being their fifth. The family lived at 208 North Lake Street in Oakland, at first renting, but ultimately purchasing their domicile, in part because Juan received a settlement from the Santa Fe when he lost an eye as a result of an industrial accident in the early 1940s. As the children grew, they attended public schools: first State Street Elementary, then Holliday Junior High, and finally, Topeka High Mary and Juan Torrez eloped in Kansas City on April 28, 1938, and later School. While the barrio provided a warm, familial consecrated their marriage at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Oakland. environment, with plenty of relatives and children Courtesy of the Torrez family. to play with, the Torrez offspring were not immune from confronting some of the discriminatory practices extant in Topeka and other parts of center of a fiesta to commemorate the Virgen as well as to Kansas. Research by scholars has documented the myriad showcase Mexican culture. The event became a fundraiser difficulties the Mexicano populace in this neighborhood and ultimately an opportunity to share traditions with faced during the early decades of the 1900s. While the the broader populace.12 barrio dwellers in Oakland did tough, physical labor that others did not wish to do, they also endured low wages, s the fiesta became a regular affair in the middle limited educational and economic opportunities, and of the 1930s, Louis and Mary saw each other segregated facilities. As one historian noted, “in virtually at the fair and sometimes at Mass. Louis often every Kansas town and city, Mexicans and Mexican asked her to join him and some of his sisters Americans remained segregated in movie theaters and to attend the movie theater or to go dancing, but Calixto were often restricted from some sections of city parks, Anever acquiesced. As a result of Louis’s interactions and churches, and other public facilities.”14 In discussions probably with some coaxing about there being a pretty

13. Groenhagen, “Torrez, Church Prepare for Fiesta Mexicana.” 12. Kevin Groenhagen, “Torrez, Church Prepare for Fiesta Mexicana,” 14. Robert Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation: Mexican Kaw Valley Senior Monthly, July 2009, 1, 3; Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta, Immigrants in Kansas, 1900 to World War II,” Western Historical Quarterly 1983, brochure, 2. 16 (October 1985): 432, 429–48.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 169 Mary and Juan Torrez had eight children, of whom Mike was the fifth. They are pictured here with Ernestine, Evelyn, Johnny, Mickey, Mike (seated on far left), Stella, and Richard. Courtesy of the Torrez family.

with family members, it becomes clear how many of circumstances, Juan sought out other sources of income, these customs impacted their daily lives. Both Mike and including transporting bootleg wine to Kansas City. his older brother John, for example, confirmed having In this endeavor, he often utilized one of his children faced discriminatory practices at a local movie theater or their cousins as props to make it appear as if the (Jayhawk Theater) and a public swimming pool (Gage family was merely on an outing during the clandestine Park) during the 1950s.15 runs. The children also chipped in, with Mike and John In order to survive economically, all members recalling efforts to raise fiesta money by picking potatoes contributed to the household. Mary worked at an egg in the early 1950s. During one of these periods of factory and, like many other Mexican American women, employment, Mike created a bit of a stir (and got himself, cleaned houses. Furthermore, in order to better their his older brother, and several cousins fired) in an early demonstration of the capabilities of his pitching arm. As John recalls, Mike was upset because he believed his tally of potatoes picked was not totaled correctly. In a fit of youthful rambunctiousness, Mike hurled a rotten tuber 15. John and Mike Torrez, interview, August 2012. at his foreman, hitting him. The youths were summarily

170 Kansas History Many historians have noted the role of religious and other local organizations (such as mutual aid societies, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and others) in helping to support, preserve, and provide representation to the broader society, but there is one facet, sports, that has not received sufficient attention. Indeed, by the time of Mike’s birth, Mexicano baseball and basketball teams were an established part of life. For the boys of the Torrez clan, the variety of athletic endeavors, even when having to work to help support their family, provided an outlet for youthful exuberance, local pride, and for Mike, eventually led to an opportunity to play baseball on the grandest stage of all: the World Series. In addition to baseball, other athletic pursuits such as softball and basketball were entrenched in the barrios of the Midwest. One of historian Richard Santillan’s sources, who played baseball in such leagues for years, surmised Mexicans and Mexican Americans faced discrimination in Topeka that throughout the region, “Sports were more than between the 1930s and 1950s. Mike Torrez and other young Mexican American athletes rarely competed against white teams, instead games. It was an entire community affair which took on playing other Mexican American ball clubs from nearby communities. political and social importance. Sports acted as a vehicle Courtesy of the Torrez family. for us to plan how to confront the discrimination facing all of us.”17 Beyond the plethora of the community-based sports, dismissed, but the event foreshadowed some of the the years after World War II also witnessed expanded “stuff” that Mike would demonstrate on a much grander prospects for Mexican youths to play at the high school stage later. level and in city-wide programs. This was due, in part, to increased agitation by returning veterans to improve port was one area in which whites often chose not conditions for their hijos and hijas (sons and daughters) to interact with the Spanish-surnamed population in the public schools. As more and more estudiantes in Kansas, at least before the 1950s. Juan Torrez, (students) reached high school, some found their way for example, was an avid baseball fan and player, on to gridirons, diamonds, and courts to represent local but Mary recalls he seldom had a chance to play on the institutions.18 Mike Torrez and his older brother John Sdiamond against whites.16 Mostly, teams of Mexicanos took full advantage of such offerings, excelling in various in this part of Topeka played at the Santa Fe and Ripley sports at Topeka High School (THS). Parks and almost exclusively competed against squads Juan taught his sons how to throw, catch, and hit, and from other Mexican American communities, such as sometimes took them to see professionals in action via the Kansas City. While not given many opportunities to games of the local Class A minor league team, the Topeka challenge the majority population, this generation of Reds. One of Mike’s recollections was that he won a Torrezes passed down a knowledge and love of the game pitching contest staged by the club, and Jim Maloney, then to the next, and John, Mike, and Richard benefited greatly the local nine’s star pitcher, encouraged and gave him tips from their expertise. According to Louis, his brother was to improve his delivery.19 Furthermore, Juan managed his also an excellent boxer who did, on occasion, fight white pugilists. As a result of the older generation’s love for sports, the brothers were encouraged to pursue a plethora of athletic activities. They hunted and fished, and played 17. Richard Santillan, “Mexican Social History in the Mid-West baseball, football, and basketball. United States: A Study of Four Generations, 1915–1995,” unpublished manuscript, 95. 18. Iber, Latinos in U.S. Sport, 158–61. 19. Maury Allen, “Mets’ Torrez Weathering Latest Strom,” New York Post, May 17, 1983, as found in Binder 18044, Mike Torrez Collection, 16. Torrez family interviews, August 2012. Southwest Collection Archive, Texas Tech University.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 171 boys in the Cosmopolitan as well as Little Leagues and based sports initiatives, and it attracted teams from Iowa, gained a great reputation as a wonderful coach, even Nebraska, Missouri, and elsewhere in late March or early guiding his charges to city-wide titles. Contrary to Juan’s April of each year. In 1964 Mike attended and participated. experiences of having to play exclusively against other Though cautioned by his older brother not to play, Mike “Mexican” teams during the 1920s and 1930s, by the time did and garnered a write-up about his participation in the he started coaching in the 1950s, John recalled that there local paper. While such notoriety is usually welcomed, were no “ethnic” teams in the youth leagues of Topeka. this story created a problem. Although he was not paid, “Everybody signed up in grade school, and the players when the Kansas State High School Activities Association were divided up into teams.” It turns out that Juan Torrez (KSHSAA) became aware, it ruled Mike ineligible for proved very popular with his charges, and not just because further participation in school-sanctioned athletics. The of his teams’ successes on the field. John stated that part of organization’s ruling ended Mike’s time on the hardwood his dad’s appeal to area children was that “win or lose, we for the Trojans, but allowed him to focus on pitching.22 always got ice cream” after each ball game.20 Beginning in 1964, John was also part of a group of local Mexican American leaders who commenced a similar s the oldest boy, John became the first in the undertaking in Topeka. Not surprisingly, the 7-Ups were a family to compete on behalf of THS and was dominant team in that competition, with John and Richard among the first Mexican Americans to play both helping lead the squad to an impressive number of basketball for the Trojans. He also played victories by the early 1970s.23 Mike played on behalf of the football for the school between 1958 and 1960 and pitched squad after he turned professional right after high school. Afor the final team (from that era) fielded by this institution. In an ironic twist, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, due The reason for THS dropping baseball was, John noted, to intermarriage and other social changes, many whites because the sport interfered too much with the track were asking for the opportunity to play in some of the team’s schedule. Many athletes competed on both squads highly competitive “Mexican” or “Hispanic” tournaments leading to conflicts and “I guess the track coach just had in the area. This created a debate among sponsors, many of more pull!” Because of his athletic abilities, John had the whom wanted to keep the events “strictly” for the Spanish- opportunity to attend a junior college (Cowley County surnamed. John was one of the organizers who argued Community College in Arkansas City) and completed that, with so many individuals (including members of a technical degree in printing. He then moved on to try the Torrez family) now the offspring of “mixed” ethnic out with the New Mexico State University Aggies, but he relationships, it made sense to include a number of “non- did not make the football team. As a result of not earning Latino” athletes on squads. When some whites continued an athletic scholarship with NMSU, John returned to to complain to John, he poignantly reminded his fellow Topeka where was drafted in 1963, but not accepted into athletes that “now you know how we felt,” back in the the military. Subsequently, he began a lengthy career at 1940s and 1950s.24 the Santa Fe. John also followed in his father’s footsteps Like younger brothers are prone to do, Mike looked by being both a player and coach in Mexican American- up to his older sibling and, seeing that John had played organized athletics, remaining active until the late 2000s. football from an early age, he too wanted to participate. For example, he was associated with a basketball team Neither Juan nor Mary opposed this notion, but it was called the Topeka 7-Ups for many years. The squad played John who urged Mike not to play. John, who had injured in numerous tournaments throughout the Midwest, his shoulder as a senior, cautioned his brother that the including one of the most important, based in Omaha, hardwood would be a safer option to protect his pitching Nebraska, which commenced in the mid-1950s.21 The Omaha tourney was, by the early 1960s, an impressive example of Mexican American community-

22. Neal Russo, “Torrez Left Benson with Stinging Hand,” St. Louis (Mo.) Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1968; John and Mike Torrez interview, August 2012. 23. 9th Annual Topeka Mexican Basketball Tournament, brochure, copy in author’s possession. 20. John Torrez, interview, August 2012. 24. John and Mike Torrez interview, August 2012. See also: 9th Annual 21. Ibid. See also Golden Anniversary Omaha Mexican Basketball Topeka Mexican Basketball Tournament, brochure. For a discussion on a Tournaments: 1954–2004, sponsored by the Mexican American Athletic similar topic, please see Allen Quakenbush, “Hispanic Hoops,” Topeka Club, Omaha, Nebraska, brochure, copy in author’s possession. (Kans.) Capital-Journal, January 8, 1991.

172 Kansas History again, the older sibling stepped in. John noted that in one tournament, after Mike had pitched a complete first game of a doubleheader, his coach ordered Torrez to warm up for the second contest. John refused to allow his brother to continue, and actually threatened to take him home rather than continue.25

n early 1964, the eighteen-year old had just concluded a 13–1 campaign with the Van-T American Legion team, hurled the Eastern Kansas All Stars to victory over a similar squad from the western regions of the state, and wrapped up his third (and final) year Iof American Legion baseball by striking out eighteen batters and leading Kansas to victory over the Nebraska Legion Stars. As was standard practice for MLB teams, there were individuals who scouted specific locales for organizations. In eastern Kansas, that person on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals was former Washburn University coach Marion McDonald. Shortly after Mike’s victory in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series for the Yankees the scout proudly recalled that Mike, as a seventeen-year old, had dominated his opposition. “What really sold me on Torrez was an American Legion game at Lawrence. The Lawrence players could hardly get their bats around fast enough to hit a fair ball.”26 The prospect of trying out for an MLB organization was a chance to impact positively both the personal and familial circumstances for the Torrez clan. Even before free agency, earnings of non–front-line players in “the show” dwarfed take-home After graduating from high school, Mike Torrez signed a $20,000 pay of a “typical” Oakland resident. As an example of contract with the Saint Louis Cardinals. Although the contract was the disparity, it is interesting to quote from a story in a for $55,000 less than the Detroit Tigers planned to offer him, Torrez Topeka paper just three years after Mike’s entry into did not feel bitter. In a 1968 interview he remarked that “$20,000 was a lot of money anyway,” especially to a working-class family with professional baseball. As Bob Hartzell noted in an article eight children. Undated clipping from the Topeka Capital-Journal. in the fall of 1967, “Mike probably will draw somewhere Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Torrez family. around $12,000 from the Cardinals next season. The two friends he was with Tuesday night don’t make that much between them.”27 Juan and Mary’s many years of diligent effort and toil arm—an arm which, by Mike’s mid-teens, had started to had, by the very early 1960s, provided a modicum of garner attention from knowledgeable baseball personnel. success; they owned their home as well as the adjacent Torrez made a name for himself playing baseball in lot. Juan had also been promoted over his years of service local leagues in and around Topeka by the late 1950s. He beyond “common” laborer status to carman, and later, played at the Cosmopolitan, Little, and Colt levels, and coach carman (working on upholstery). While a step or eventually moved on to play higher caliber American Legion baseball with the Topeka Caps. When Mike took to the mound, he got noticed, and not just because of his 6’ 4” stature. John recalls that it was not uncommon for 25. John and Mike Torrez interview, August 2012. his younger sibling to strike out as many as fifteen or 26. “Torrez Started as ‘Skinny’ Cager,” St. Louis (Mo.) Globe-Democrat, November 7, 1977. sixteen batters per outing and this led to another concern: 27. Bob Hartzell, “Prep Parade,” Topeka (Kans.) Daily Capital, October overworking a potential professional prospect. Once 19, 1967.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 173 young Kansan was instead a Native American because, purportedly, “he had not seen a Mexican that tall.”29 Rickey’s statement is weighty for two reasons. First, it provides credence to the perception that Mexican Americans could not be gifted athletes. Second, it shows a perplexing lack of awareness by Rickey—just two years prior to Mike’s tryout, the ERA leader for the American League was another “tall Mexican,” Hank Aguirre of the Detroit Tigers.30 The Cardinals did not sign Mike, but promised to get back to him. In the meantime, the Detroit Tigers gave him a tryout in Kansas City. Again, the organization showed interest. The Tigers were so impressed that their representatives visited the family domicile and asked Mike not to answer calls from other clubs. Shortly thereafter, however, the Cardinals’ operatives, Charley Frey and George Silvey, offered $20,000 for Mike’s signature. This was more money than Juan would earn over multiple years of labor at the Santa Fe (he was then making around $5,000 per year). Not surprisingly, the couple advised their son to pursue his career with St. Louis. As Mike noted in a 1968 interview, “$20,000 was a lot of money anyway. My parents didn’t know anything about contracts. With eight kids to support, there never was any money. I’m just thankful that God gave me a good arm.”31 While this was a great While in the minors, Torrez played in North Carolina, Arkansas, and deal of money, the Torrez family’s lack of financial Oklahoma. After receiving national recognition for his pitching with the Tulsa Oilers, he was brought up to the majors for the first time by sophistication proved costly, because a short while later the Cardinals in September 1967. Courtesy of the Torrez family. the Tigers offered $75,000. While not demonstratively bitter about these circumstances, it appears such a harsh introduction to the “realities” of baseball economics was a two above many friends and neighbors, such assets did lesson that Mike drew upon later. He reported to a facility not radically alter the familia’s financial wherewithal. The in Hollywood, Florida, and after a couple of weeks of Cardinals, however, proffered an opportunity to utilize instruction, began a minor league career that took him to the love of the game, and Mike’s innate talent, into a North Carolina, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. transformative event. In the months after high school The treatment of African Americans in the minor graduation Mike and his family worked to make this leagues has generated substantial research. The story of dream a reality.28 Latinos in these leagues, however, has received far less To pursue his aspirations, Juan and Mike traveled attention.32 In a 1987 essay, historian Samuel O. Regalado beyond the familiar landscape of Topeka, east to the other effectively detailed the trials and tribulations confronted side of the Show-Me State, for a tryout at Busch Stadium. After warming up, the eighteen-year-old pitched to Vernon Benson, who advised the young man to “open it up.” When Mike complied, it was so impressive that the 29. John and Mike Torrez interview, August 2012. 30. For a discussion on the perceived limitations of Latinos/Mexican Cardinals’ legendary general manager, Branch Rickey, Americans as athletes, please see Iber et al., Latinos in U.S. Sport, 71– was summoned to judge his potential. Rickey was taken 76; 116–18. See also Robert E. Copley, The Tall Mexican: The Life of Hank aback, so much so that he refused to believe that Mike Aguirre: All-Star Pitcher, Businessman, Humanitarian (Houston, Tex.: Piñata Books, 2000). was Mexican American. The executive thought that the 31. Russo, “Torrez Left Benson with Stinging Hand.” 32. For an overview of the integration of this classification of professional baseball in the South, see Bruce Adelson, Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South 28. Ibid. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999).

174 Kansas History Such courtesies were extended to the Spanish-surnamed players, whether they were mulattos, black, or Mexican American.33

n examination of Torrez’s minor league career did not indicate that he faced situations such as those Regalado described. There appear to be two key differences from that of Mike’s Spanish-surnamed predecessors. First, by the mid-1960s, Athere were more Latinos in the minors and the “novelty” had been mitigated. For example, the first team for which Mike played in the Cardinals’ system (Raleigh in the Carolina League) included several other Latinos.34 Furthermore, other Spanish-surnamed individuals, such as catcher Pat Corrales (who would go on to become the first Mexican American to manage a Major League squad) were present on teams to “show him the ropes” both on and off the field. Second, Mike, having been born and raised in the United States, spoke English, and, though not necessarily exposed to the totality of Southern-style Jim Crow regulations and traditions in Kansas, was not perceived in the same way as were mulatto or black Spanish-speakers. Mike moved up the minors quickly, and to help refine his mechanics, was sent to the Instructional League in Florida. There he shined, finishing the winter of 1966 with a record of 6–1 and an ERA of 1.20. This performance merited an invitation to the Cardinals’ Major League In the winter of 1967–1968, Torrez played with the Tigres del Licey in spring training, where Mike was one of the last players the Dominican Republic. Torrez, whose family emphasized learning demoted (to AAA affiliate Tulsa) before the start of the English, did not speak fluent Spanish, which surprised many of the people he encountered while playing in the Caribbean. Courtesy of the 1967 season. At Tulsa he benefited from the tutelage of Torrez family. one of the all-time great pitchers, Warren Spahn, as his manager with the Oilers as well as the advice of battery- mate Pat Corrales. During the second half of that year Torrez earned national recognition from The Sporting by the likes of Juan Marichal, Minnie Minoso, Felipe News, a critical accomplishment. Shortly after the end of Alou, Luis Tiant, and others on their way to “the show” in Tulsa’s season, Mike was summoned to the parent club the 1950s. The most interesting aspect of Regalado’s study on September 10 and debuted the following day. In an examined the disparity of treatment of Latino ballplayers auspicious beginning, Mike struck out the first batter playing as lower-level professionals in different sections he faced, Donn Clendenon of the Pittsburgh Pirates, to of the country. In brief, Regalado argued that individuals preserve a Cardinals’ victory.35 who wound up in places such as Tacoma, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, might have missed Latino companionship and cuisine, but they were far better off than colleagues ill-fated enough to wind up in places 33. Samuel J. Regalado, “The Minor League Experience of Latin such as Lakeland, Florida, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. American Baseball Players in Western Communities, 1950–1970,” Journal of the West 26 (January 1987): 65–70. Some athletes were even more fortunate and wound up 34. The roster of the 1965 Raleigh Cardinals can be accessed at: plying their trade in locales such as San Diego, California, http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=3b43bae6. 35. John Ferguson, “Think . . . and Serve Up Strikes—It’s Paying Off and Phoenix, Arizona, and interacted with comunidades for Tulsa’s Torrez,” The Sporting News, September 2, 1967. See also Bob (communities) that often welcomed them with open arms. Hurt, “Capitalizing on Sports, Topeka Daily Capital, February 21, 1968.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 175 Mike enjoyed some time with hometown fans during a day in his honor in Topeka over the July 4th holiday in 1976. He was then pitching for the Oakland Athletics, who were in town to play against the Kansas City Royals. Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Torrez family.

After the end of the season the Cardinals asked Mike station. “The guy asked me in Spanish how tall I was and I to pitch in a winter league. It was not at all unusual for told him 220 pounds. It really cracked him up.”36 MLB teams to send talented prospects to sharpen their The language barrier notwithstanding, he performed skills in Caribbean-based leagues. For Mike, however, well, and a Topeka reporter observed that “word siphon- his background created issues as, due to his surname, ing down from the Busch headquarters indicates Torrez it was assumed he was fluent in Español. During Mike’s stands a good chance of becoming the fifth starter for the childhood, it was not uncommon for Mexican American Cards. At least, he’ll get a good look in spring training.”37 families not to encourage the speaking of Spanish, beyond It is interesting to note that Mike discussed how playing just a few words as ethnic markers. This lack of fluency in the Caribbean forced him to miss two things he most led to some thorny situations, explained Torrez, such as enjoyed during Kansas winters: hunting and playing when “this guy called me from Santo Domingo. He was speaking Spanish and I was trying to tell him I didn’t want to pitch there. But he must have misunderstood me. I don’t speak Spanish too well. Anyway, he sent me a contract, 36. Quoted in Bob Hartzell, “Prep Parade,” Topeka Daily Capital, October 19, 1967. and I thought what the heck, so I signed.” Mike also had 37. Bob Hurt, “Capitalizing on Sports,” Topeka Daily Capital, February trouble in an interview with a Spanish-speaking radio 21, 1968.

176 Kansas History “some basketball. I should get back in January and I hope to play some then—maybe some city league and some Mexican tournaments.” Even as Mike neared “the show,” sporting events among and with co-ethnics remained of vital importance.38 Torrez earned his first Major League victory against Chicago on April 19, 1968. By late May, he sported a 2–1 record with a 2.64 ERA. However, the staff for the Cardinals had been so efficient that he only had 17 1/3 innings under his belt seven weeks into the season. Even though he had been effectual, with several other talented pitchers on the staff (such as Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton), General Manager Bing Devine believed it necessary for Mike to get in more work, meaning a return trip to Tulsa for more “seasoning.”39

ike finally established himself with the Cardinals in 1969, though he continued to have bouts of poor control. While sporting a 10–4 record, he followed with two Msubpar years of 8–10 and 1–2. Wildness, the Mike Torrez’s success, especially his playing in the 1977 World Series, heightened community pride among residents of the Oakland barrio. Courtesy of the Topeka end of a first marriage, and partying (one Capital-Journal, 1977. local reporter dubbed him a “Knight of the Neon”) were noted as reasons for a trade to Montreal. Mike pitched for the Expos between 1971 and 1974 and had a 40–32 record with some poor Torrez’s connection with Mexican American events squads. Conflict with his manager was cited as a reason continued, taking on importance during the years of the for a trade to the Orioles in 1975. In hope of improving Chicano movement. As noted in an article by Leonard their previous year’s finish, Baltimore then sent Mike to David Ortiz in Kansas History on the movimiento in Oakland in a deal for Reggie Jackson the next year. In Kansas City, around the time that Mike toiled for St. the Bay Area, Torrez joined a squad being dismantled by Louis, comunidades were awash in protest against a owner Charlie Finley and he indicated no desire to remain myriad of social and economic issues and actively sought with the Athletics. Finally, shortly after the start of the role models for barrio adolescents. Among the myriad 1977 season, Finley traded Mike to New York. It was here undertakings during this era (in labor, education, politics, that Torrez earned his greatest notoriety and eventually and culture) were offerings in sport, and while not new, millions via free agency. What he had already become, such activities took on more political overtones. Having however, was a role model for barrio youths in Topeka. a person from the barrio competing at the highest levels of the national pastime would only bring more positive attention and recognition for Mexican Americans.40

38. Bob Hartzell, “Prep Parade,” Topeka Daily Capital, October 19, 1967. 39. Larry Harnly, “Cards’ Torrez Needs to Pitch,” Springfield (Ill.) 40. Leonard David Ortiz, “‘La Voz de La Gente’: Chicano Activist Journal-Register, May 31, 1968; Neal Russo, “Rookie Torrez Ducks Publications in the Kansas City Area, 1968–1989,” Kansas History: A Disaster in First Victory,” The Sporting News, May 4, 1968. Journal of the Central Plains 22 (Autumn 1999): 228–44.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 177 Over his eighteen-season career, Mike Torrez played for seven Major League baseball teams. Here he is pictured with a fan in North Topeka, ten years after Torrez’s retirement from pitching. Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal, August 30, 1994.

Articles in mainstream publications documented To get a clearer sense of the transformation, it is Mike’s role in the community and cataloged how the necessary to turn to barrio-generated publications. For media’s perception of him changed. For example, one of instance, a local journal called Adelante (Forward) noted the first exposés that chronicled Torrez’s participation in in 1976 that Mike would pitch for the A’s against the the barrio can be seen in a 1969 piece. While the text focused Royals, in nearby Kansas City, and that Topeka would on how the Cardinals were doing, the accompanying honor a native son with an official proclamation. Among photo told another, and more significant, narrative. The the day’s events was an opportunity for area children to photo shows a Major Leaguer sharing “tricks of the trade” meet the pitcher. Another facet was a call for residents with almost exclusively African American and Latino to visit with Chicano businesses to purchase tickets for a youths, presumably in his old neighborhood. Journalist bus trip to the game. An additional piece noted a similar Bob Hentzen’s text presents Mike as a “hometown boy caravan had visited Royals Stadium previously when makes good” that all Topekans could take pride in. It Mike pitched for the Orioles. As the anonymous author is only later, as the Chicano movement became more stated, Torrez “has been an inspiration to thousands of prevalent, that it became critical for Oakland residents to directly “claim” Mike Torrez.41

“claiming” a professional athlete, please see Nicolas P. Ciotola, “Spignesi, Sinatra, and the Pittsburgh Steelers: Franco’s Italian Army as 41. Bob Hentzen, “Torrez Eyes 1964 Repeat,” Topeka Daily Capital, July an Expression of Ethnic Identity, 1972–1977,” Journal of Sport History 27 24, 1969. For a discussion of the significances of an ethnic community (Summer 2000): 271–89.

178 Kansas History Chicano kids all over America, who hope to follow in rez in a UPI story where his neighborhood was described his footsteps. . . . Bien hecho, Michael!” Furthermore, as a “ghetto.” Mike recalled the environs of his childhood Mike and his ties to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish were as a locale where “there were dirt roads and old barns . . . prominently demonstrated in Fiesta Mexicana bulletins outhouses . . . cows, pigs and chickens. . . . It wasn’t no during the mid-1970s. Here, he was included along with Hollywood Hills.” While this does not sound much differ- other local Chicanos/as who served as inspiration for ent from the source quoted earlier, it did cause consterna- youths to greater achievements in sports, business, the tion, in part because the years of the 1960s and 1970s had classroom, and other facets of life.42 brought about new political empowerment and pride in Oakland. The pitcher modified his depiction noting that f the comunidad perceived Mike as demonstrating “I wasn’t relating to the whole Oakland area. . . . And that the aptitude and pride of Oakland’s populace, such was 20 years ago. . . . It’s a nice place to live.” Swiftly, all feelings increased after the 1977 World Series. As a was forgiven and Topeka (and Oakland) feted Mike. Hent- result, Mike was not only a hero to Latinos, but now zen finalized his piece by offering a further balm to hurt his success demonstrated the potential of barrio dwellers feelings, stating that the community now had an important Ito the broader community: “these were his people—the personage at the national stage, and that was something people who raised him, had molded him, had grown up that all Mexican Americans (and Topekans) should revel with him. Torrez obviously is not just the children’s hero in: “Big Mike ain’t the type, no matter how big a baseball in Oakland. He is everybody’s hero. That was obvious by hero he becomes, to forget his ol’ hometown.”45 the number of adults who sought autographs, handshakes A fitting way to conclude this piece is to place Mike’s and pictures. ‘It’s really the first time I’ve ever been back at life in the context of developing historiographical trends least where the whole community has been involved’ [emphasis in Latino/Mexican American history. As noted, biogra- added].”43 The year culminated with Mike Torrez being phies on Mexican Americans are gaining acceptance. One named the 1977 Kansan of the Year by the Topeka Daily study, the life of Felix Tijerina, a restaurateur and educa- Capital, a first for Latinos in this state. The article discussed tion advocate from Houston, presents the most straightfor- his upbringing and background and argued that sport was ward argument for the value of such literature. The author, a way for ethnics to achieve success. Here was a Spanish- Thomas H. Kreneck, argued such undertakings were nec- surnamed individual who was no longer from the “wrong essary because “the history of Mexican Americans . . . does side of the tracks,” but rather “an accomplished American not have to be only the account of faceless laborers, class- . . . [having] reached a pinnacle millions of American men es, and gender as reflected in the statistics . . . and demo- and boys have dreamed about.”44 The zenith of his Mexican graphics.” The use of biographies is not meant to replace American dream come true occurred shortly after Game 6 community studies and similar efforts, merely to enrich when Mike signed with the Red Sox for a reported $2.7 the existing literature by adjoining to such works a sense million over a five-year contract. of “‘the human dimension’ . . . [so that] the individual be The most vivid illustration of Mike’s prominence in the given proper credit.”46 barrio, as well as the community’s increased pride as a result With a story such as Mike Torrez’s, it is possible to shed of the Chicano movement, is documented in another Hent- light on several components of barrio life, as well as bring- zen article. Here, the sportswriter asks barrio denizens not ing into sharper focus the significance of this individual be too upset as a result of post–Game 6 quotations by Tor- to his community and baseball in general. More broadly, Torrez’s story, and that of other Latino/a athletes (at all levels), can be used as pathways to a fuller understanding of the totality of the Mexican American experience in Kansas and elsewhere. 42. “Mike Torrez Day!,” Adelante, June 20, 1976, as found in Binder 10001, Mike Torrez Scrapbook Collection, Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University; “Torrez, Pride of Topeka Chicano Community,” October 5, 1975, unidentified clipping, Binder 10001, Mike Torrez Scrapbook Collection; Bob Hentzen, “A’s Players Stick Together in Latest Fuss,” Topeka Daily Capital, July 4, 1976; Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta Mexicana, 1974, brochure; Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta Mexicana, 1976, brochure. 45. Bob Hentzen, “Aw, Oakland Natives, Don’t Be Mad at Mike,” Topeka 43. Mark Nusbaum, “Torrez Moved by Hero’s Welcome,” Topeka Capital- Daily Capital, October 21, 1977. Journal, undated clipping, Binder 3008, Mike Torrez Scrapbook Collection. 46. Thomas H. Kreneck, Mexican American Odyssey: Felix Tijerina, 44. Matt Walsh, “Mike Torrez: 1977 Kansan of the Year,” Topeka Daily Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905–1965 (College Station: Texas A&M Capital, January 1, 1978. University Press, 2001), 14.

Sport as Means for Studying Latino/a Life in Kansas 179 Privates John Benton “Johnny” Hart (right) and Hugh F. Hart, courtesy of the editor.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 37 (Autumn 2014): 180–199

180 Kansas History Under Moonlight in Missouri: Private John Benton Hart’s Account of Price’s Raid, October 1864

edited by John Hart

ohn Benton Hart served in the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, Company I, from 1862 to 1865. In October 1864, his was one of the units sent out under General James G. Blunt to slow the march of General Sterling Price from Lexington, Missouri, toward the Kansas line. Hart took part in the battles of Lexington, the Little Blue, the Big Blue, and West- port, and in the subsequent pursuit of Price toward the Arkansas River.1 Between 1918 and 1923, at his home in western Colorado, he dictated memories of that time and of his later adventures on the frontier to his son Harry. TheJ manuscript that resulted came down through the family unpublished. Hart was born on July 10, 1842, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. In August 1854 the family settled in Jefferson County, Kansas, soon coming into conflict with proslavery immigrants.2 The memoir said nothing of the boy’s early life. On September 9, 1862, at Camp Lyon near Fort Leavenworth, “Johnny” Hart volunteered for the Eleventh Kansas Infantry, then in the process of organization. The roll described him as brown-haired, blue-eyed, fair, and just five feet, five inches tall. On December 7, he was wounded at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.3

John Hart, the great-grandson of John Benton Hart, is an environmental historian and the author of fifteen books concerning such topics as western water controversies, agricultural land preservation, regional planning, and wilderness preservation. He lives near San Francisco, California. The author is grateful to Daniel Smith and Mike Calvert, of the Civil War Round Tables of Kansas City and Western Missouri, respectively, for their help and guidance, especially in matching the Hart account as well as possible to the landscape and the calendar. Thanks also to authors Mark A. Lause and Darryl Levings, and to Hart family historian David Hart, for sharing their expertise.

1. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, 1861–1865 (Topeka: The Kansas State Printing Company, 1896), facsimile available online at http://archive.org/details/reportofadjutant00kans; “Roster and Descriptive Roll, Eleventh Regiment, Cavalry, Kansas Civil War Volunteers,” microfilm AR116, State Archives Division, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka, available online at Kansas Memory Database, #227699, http://www. kansasmemory.org/item/227699; a brief regimental history and “The Price Raid” also available in William G. Cutler and Alfred T. Andreas, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1883), 1:195–97, 204–8, available online at http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/sthist/milrec-p12.html. 2. Cutler and Andreas, History of the State of Kansas, 1:520. 3. “Roster and Descriptive Roll,” 79. Twin brother Hugh F. Hart had joined the same regiment and company on August 15, 1863; his absence from the Civil War portion of the memoir is a mystery. Young John Benton Hart was apparently always called “Johnny,” and so he shall be here.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 181 For the next two years the Eleventh divided its time between combatting Indians on the frontier and Confed- erates and guerillas in the Missouri borderlands. It was in the latter locale when word came of Price’s approach.5 General Sterling Price invaded Missouri in September 1864 with more than ten thousand men, in a desperate attempt to divert Union forces from the east, to recruit men and capture matériel, and perhaps to influence the fall elections. After failing to destroy the garrison at Fort Davidson (Pilot Knob), Price aborted a planned assault on St. Louis and turned west toward Jefferson City, which he threatened but elected not to attack. He worked his way on toward Kansas, creating short-lived jubilation among Confederate sympathizers as he passed, but not provok- ing the full-scale pro-Southern uprising he seemed to have banked on. While Union General Samuel R. Curtis dug in to defend Westport and Kansas City, General Blunt went east with two thousand men, including the Elev- enth Kansas, to locate Price and then to resist his advance. Meanwhile, Generals Alfred Pleasonton and Andrew J. Smith were pursuing the Confederates from the rear. Blunt urged Curtis to come eastward and face Price at the Little Blue River on October 21, but his superior had to decline, because the Kansas State Militia, an essential part of the force, would not go that far into Missouri. Blunt, and notably Moonlight, nonetheless made an effec- Born on July 10, 1842, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, John Benton tive stand at the Little Blue before retreating grudgingly Hart settled with his family in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, in through Independence to the main Union line along the August 1854, and served as a private in Company I, Eleventh Kansas Blue River.6 Cavalry, from 1862 to 1865. Beginning almost fifty years later, at his On October 22, General Price located an unguarded home in western Colorado, Hart dictated memories of that time and ford on the Blue, penetrated and flanked the defense, and of his later adventures on the frontier to his son Harry. The resulting drove the Union forces back on Westport. On the same manuscript, published in part for the first time here, came down through the family. Portrait courtesy of the author. day, a messenger made it through to General Pleason- ton, who accelerated his advance. It would have shocked Johnny, who thought he was part of a coordinated campaign, to know that the two generals had not heretofore n April 1863, the unit was converted to cavalry, with been in touch, because the telegraph lines were down. Thomas Moonlight in command. This strikingly On October 23, the battle surged back and forth across named military man was born in Scotland. In the Brush Creek south of Westport. The Union side was United States by 1850, he settled in Leavenworth already gaining when Pleasonton, having bloodily forced County, Kansas, in 1860. He earned much praise for his his own way across the Blue, appeared out of the stream- Iservice against Price and much blame for some bad deci- side timber. Then the story focused on Price’s retreat sions made the following year in fighting Lakota and toward the Arkansas River, punctuated by several more Cheyenne in Dakota Territory.4 Johnny, for his part, idol- pitched battles with pursuing Union forces. ized his commander.

5. Howard M. Monnett, Action Before Westport, 1864, rev. ed. (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1995), 36. 4. See for instance Douglas C. McChristian and Paul L. Hedren, 6. Monnett, Action Before Westport. See also Edgar Langsdorf, “Price’s Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains (Norman: University of Raid and the Battle of Mine Creek,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Oklahoma Press, 2009), 236. Plains 37 (Summer 2014): 78–99.

182 Kansas History Despite such serious treatments as Howard Monnett’s personal animosity toward individual Confederates Action Before Westport (1964) and Mark Lause’s The Collapse and Southern sympathizers he encountered is striking. of Price’s Raid (2014), the events surrounding the Battle of Also notable are the almost affectionate interactions he Westport have received less attention than they deserve.7 reported between officers and men. As Johnny wrote, The fate of Price’s invasion, historians agree, did little “the officers in the Civil War would talk to their men, to change the course, or even to delay the conclusion, of somewhat sociable at times. They could dine with their the larger war, but its scale and its regional importance men in a pinch and not feel lowered by so doing.” were huge. Hart’s account of Price’s Raid was preserved in two FROM “SWEET POTATOES versions, both beginning at Lexington. An earlier man- AND OTHER STORIES” uscript, titled “Sweet Potatoes and Other Stories,” was written in his son Harry’s hand and chiefly covered Blunt’s force reached Lexington, Missouri, after an all-night events to the eve of the Battle of Westport; the second, a march from Holden on the morning of October 18 and saw its typescript titled “My Bunkies,” repeated the same inci- first action on the nineteenth. Johnny appeared to conflate the dents, often more extensively, and continued the account two days. He opened on a theme that runs through the whole to the end of the campaign. Compared to the plain diction memoir: the search for provisions. of the earlier version, the second showed some ornamen- tation added by Harry, an aspiring if unschooled writer. We marched through Lexington, and went into camp a The excerpts below have been drawn by preference from little way outside of town. As there could not be enough “Sweet Potatoes,” switching to “My Bunkies” when the corn provided for our horses from the merchants in town, former telling gives out.8 something had to be done. Andy [Andrew G.] Todd and Written down so many years after the events, Hart’s myself, and some others, were detailed to go under the account cannot be read as a literal guide to the last days command of a sergeant out among the farms and get of Price’s raid. The chronological and spatial framework what was needed. So, off we went for near a mile and a he provided is sometimes questionable. But he cap- half to a big house, and on arriving there found plenty of tured well the enlisted man’s experience of a prolonged corn of which we took one wagon load. cavalry campaign, the round-the-clock movements, the But just as the wagon load of corn was being driven snatched sleeps. When he spoke of a sixteen-day running off, Andy Todd and I sat down on the porch of the house battle leading up to the Battle of Westport, he was clearly where the people lived for a little rest. We were expected confused; yet Company I’s total journey from Hickman to bring up the rear in a few minutes. Mills, Missouri, where the march began on October 17, While resting here the lady of the house came out on to Lexington and back and down the state line to Fay- the porch where we were, and asked us if we would like etteville, Arkansas, on November 4, encompassed every some bread and milk. We replied that we would. She bit of sixteen days (and many nights), and a minimum of went back into the house, but she left an impression with 350 miles. us, for she seemed kind, had a neat appearance, a soft Unlike such narrators as H. E. Palmer, Hart did not voice and wore earrings that looked like diamonds. In a yearn for eastern battlefields, but took with utmost seri- little while a Negro woman came out with light bread and ousness his role as a defender of Kansas.9 His lack of milk. She cut slice after slice for us, and we had a feast, nothing in our lives tasted so good as that light bread and milk. We thanked the lady of the house who was standing in the doorway, then made for our horses. 7. Mark A. Lause, The Collapse of Price’s Raid: The Beginning of the End in Civil War Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2014), forthcoming. Just as we were mounted, the lady came running out to This is volume two of Lause’s exhaustive treatment of the campaign. where we were. She threw her arms up and grabbed me 8. The manuscripts are in the collection of John Hart, the narrator’s by the trouser leg, and now the ear rings were gone, her great-grandson, in San Rafael, California. “Sweet Potatoes and Other Stories” comprises about 16,000 words, “My Bunkies” about 23,000. ears were bleeding, her hair was down over her shoulders In addition, over 100,000 words describe John Benton Hart’s later and face and the pretty dress she wore all torn to pieces. experiences in Dakota Territory (now Wyoming and Montana) and western Colorado. “Come!” she said, “they are killing my father, come in the 9. H. E. Palmer, “The Black-Flag Character of War on the Border,” house quick! Oh, please, come!” . . . Kansas Historical Collections 9 (1906): 455. Palmer was captain of Company A, Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, but his initial enlistment was with the First Back we went pell-mell into the house, through two Kansas Battery, a part of the Fourth Kansas Infantry. rooms and started up a flight of stairs; here we pulled

Under Moonlight in Missouri 183 The Eleventh Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Cavalry organized during the summer of 1862, following President Abraham Lincoln's July 2 call for troops. John B. Hart enlisted on September 5 of that year, his twin brother Hugh F. Hart on August 15, a year later. They were listed on this “descriptive roll,” along with many other recruits from Grasshopper (Valley) Falls and Burlingame, and mustered out together with the regiment on September 26, 1865.

out our guns. “That’s right, boys. God bless you,” she a sack of silverware with them. We was going to make said, and all the time kept hurrying us up the stairs. As them leave that, but the lady said, “Let them have it! Let soon as we were on the landing [we] could hear arrogant them take it! Get them out of here! That’s all I want!” Out demanding voices through a door. The lady opened a of the house they went, and we after them like a couple door and pushed us into the room. of bulldogs. In the yard once more the lady thanked us, indeed, she here was a very old gentleman sitting in a high had been doing so every minute it seemed to us. Then the backed rickety-looking chair. His hair was white mother soul in her bared itself free. She wanted to save, and his face nearly as white, and his hands to pay a debt of gratitude to two boys in blue; while the looked lean and bony and thin. His head was blood of her race wore the gray. “Price,” she said, “will be pushed back against the back of the chair, his head was all here in fifteen minutes and my husband is a colonel in his Tbruised up and bleeding a little. There was two men from Southern Army, a man with influence and pull. You may the Fifteenth Kansas, pushing the barrels of their revolv- be killed going now. You may get killed, you can’t get ers against the old gentleman’s forehead, hissing through away, it’s too late. I will guarantee you boys protection, their teeth, “Where’s your money, old man? Where’s your you will not be mistreated.” And, as if to punctuate her money?”10 I poked my gun into one fellow’s neck and at plea for us like an orderly from Heaven, we could hear the same time jerked him off his feet while Andy Todd firing on the pickets. The lady said it was Price’s men. No did the same with the other one. They did not make very we said, we would have to go, and go we must. “Well,” much resistance. Down the stairs they went with not very she said, “remember both of you if you are ever wounded much ceremony, but somehow they managed to take

Stephen Z. Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and 10. The Fifteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry was commanded by Its Commander (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973). Colonel Charles R. Jennison, a notorious Jayhawker who was forced In the Price’s raid campaign, the Fifteenth Cavalry made up the core of to give up command of the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry early the First Brigade, one of the two brigades Blunt took into Missouri. See in the war in part because they too often engaged in such activity. See Monnett, Action Before Westport, 43–44.

184 Kansas History or in trouble of any kind, please let me know and I will the second would retire to improvise a new defensible line. pay the price no matter what it is. You boys saved my As its position became untenable, the forward group would father—and goodbye.” fall back through the rear group and take its turn preparing a We rode away with all the haste we could after what line. Johnny described this “saving and protecting maneuver” she had told us, about Price being so near, who knows, correctly, but, according to Blunt and others, the tactic was maybe it was so. Just as we were riding out of view from employed only later, west of the Little Blue. The reality on the the house, Andy Todd glanced back over his shoulder, saw evening of October 19 was, if anything, more impressive: it was the lady kneeling facing us as if praying for us. “That’s an the Eleventh Kansas alone—about one quarter of the force— angel of a woman, she’s good, Johnnie,” he said. We rode that covered the Union’s retreat.14 on for about a mile when we met the Negro coming back The last encounter of the day was a twilight skirmish at one of with the corn.11 He was scared, we told him to take the the crossings of Fire Prairie Creek, at a site not now identifiable. corn back to the lady and tell her that we would not take anything from her.12 Our place this time was a rather hard one. We had to cut a new road through trees and brush as best we could and The little detachment hurried through hostile Lexington with at that it was crooked, in the form of a big horseshoe. You revolvers drawn and caught up with Company I. They got a bit see the Johnnies had burnt the bridge, just enough to let of a scolding from Lieutenant William J. Drew: “You fellows are the end next to us fall down into the water, so that a part of always fooling around somewhere when you’re needed. Fall in the abutment had to be torn out and thrown into the creek, line and be good for a while, if it’s in you.” therefore the new road had to be built so as to get to [the] water.15 All the troops had to go into the water then up the Our company lined up in the middle afternoon about slanting floor of the bridge, it was the only way to cross in a one half mile south of the fairground and two miles south short time. We expected a lively time there, if the Johnnies of Lexington. We were dismounted and lined up facing crowded us very hard. We were not disappointed. south (or was it northeast?) toward Price’s men across a Soon the men came crowding through there, but most sweet potato patch; some of the potatoes were dug and of them had considerable of a time getting up the slant- heaped up in hills; there was corn, some of it in shocks ing floor of the bridge. It became wet in a little while and some still uncut: an ideal place for a hungry horse causing horses’ feet to slide back down and some of them and soldier. Was eying one of those sweet potato piles fell and rolled down causing more trouble. It couldn’t be about twenty feet in front of me and longed for just one of helped, there was not enough time to do better. Most of them. And like a flash [I] left the ranks headlong for one of our men managed to get through that crooked road in them. Just as I picked up one nice big fat fellow an officer good time; but it was growing dark and still the road was ordered me back. And it seemed like every one of the boys yet crowded with the last remnant of our men. in that line had something to say about that sweet potato. Suddenly the Johnnies crowded into the lane . . . in “What are you going to do with that potato?” “Give me the rear of our men. Immediately everything in that lane a bite!" “Going to send it home to Ma?” And last a little became a fighting bunch, all mixed up. It was evident bit of a dried-up fellow asked, “Let me carry it for you for they were being crowded pretty hard from the noise a while, Johnny?” I wanted to knock that dried-up lad a and the commotion they made. They passed the word rap, but dared not.13 That potato was crowded into my forward, “They are cutting the rear all to hell.” Every shirt bosom against a time when it could be baked. soldier knows what that means. He does not have to be knocked [down] to understand. Price’s army moved in and the fighting retreat began. Company I was ordered to line up just where our new Johnny described a tactic by which Blunt divided his force into road commenced on the left side of the road; and two two equal units. While one group made a stand against Price,

14. James G. Blunt, “General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 1 (May 1932): 211–65, available 11. “The Negro” was not otherwise identified in Hart’s account. online at www.kancoll.org/khq/1932/32_3_blunt.htm; Monnett, Action 12. The idealization of the lady seems extreme. But, unlike some Before Westport, 53, 66; Richard J. Hinton, Rebel Invasion of Missouri and other sentimentalized passages, this one was present in the plainer Kansas and the Campaign of the Army of the Border against General Sterling Price first version of the memoir as well as in the more self-conscious in October and November, 1864 (Chicago, Ill.: Church & Goodman, 1865), 88. second version. 15. Confederate advance parties ranged far to the west, sabotaging 13. This soldier was not otherwise identified. crossings.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 185 hold our fire. We didn’t want to hold our fire, but it is well that we did, many thanks to the colonel.16

fter all our men in the lane had just about gained the welcome protection of our new road, which allowed the Johnnies to come up close to us, the order was given to fire. “Fire!” Colonel Moonlight yelled, at the top of his voice. It was Aalmost as bright as day. Three companies emptied their rifles into that lane full of horses and men. Then the order came to empty our revolvers: “Shoot low in there, every man,” which we did. The Johnnies stopped crowding, they were down, horses and men. Everything in a bunch. It looked pretty hard from what we could see by the flash of our guns, but it had to be done. Everybody had a chance after that to draw a long breath. Never again did they crowd us so fast and furious as that, especially after dark.

In the small hours of October 20, the army camped somewhat east of the Little Blue River, shifting to the west bank the following day. Blunt and Monnett described a day of relative ease at this spot, but Johnny recalled a far briefer break in the action. Unknown to him, the commanders were in the midst of a tac- tical debate. General Blunt saw the west bank of the Little Blue as the best place for a definitive stand against Price and unsuc- Born in Maine and trained as a physician in Ohio, James Gillpatrick cessfully urged General Curtis to move forward; Curtis instead Blunt moved his family and practice to Greeley, Anderson County, instructed Blunt to pull the bulk of his force back to Independence, Kansas Territory, in 1856, and quickly became involved in Kansas leaving Colonel Moonlight and four hundred men at the river politics. General Blunt, who was closely identified with James H. Lane, was a controversial leader in his own right during the Civil War. At to face the Confederate assault early on the twenty-first. Their war’s end Dr. Blunt returned to the practice of medicine, this time in unexpectedly effective delaying action developed into the Battle Leavenworth, but he removed to Washington, D.C., in 1869, where of the Little Blue, with significant losses to the Confederate side.17 fortune eventually turned against him. In 1879 he was admitted to a Johnny, however, got side-tracked into a peripheral adventure. government hospital for the insane and died there on July 25, 1881. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. All our men had safely crossed a good sized creek on a splendid good bridge, which was immediately covered afterward with all kinds of inflammable material.18 Artil- lery was stationed on both sides of the road on our side companies were lined up on the right side of the road. It was dark and I do not know what two companies were lined up over there. . . . Colonel Moonlight rode up and down in front of our company, begging us to hold our 16. Colonel Moonlight at this point was not the head of the Eleventh fire, and with each word bringing his hand down good Kansas but of the larger, made-to-order unit called the Second Brigade. However, the Eleventh provided the bulk of this brigade, and Johnny and hard, as if for emphasis, on his thigh. . . . “Hold your never mentioned the nominal regimental commander of the moment, fire until I say when! I’ll say when, boys. Don’t make a Colonel Preston B. Plumb. See Monnett, Action Before Westport, 44. 17. U.S. War Department, “Report of Colonel Thomas Moonlight, fool of yourselves.” You have to see a man in action like Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, Commanding Second Brigade,” in The War that to appreciate the value of the man, to see the real life of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government being lived in a few minutes. Across the colonel went to Printing Office, 1893), 591. the other two companies begging them like he had us to 18. The “creek” was the Little Blue River.

186 Kansas History of the creek, so as to rake the bridge. One regiment, and Lieutenant Drew hallooed to her “to please open the the Second Kansas and the Second Colorado, held the gate and let us go through.” Quick, she ran like a deer and place and burnt the bridge, which forced the Johnnies to opened the gate for us, and held it open until we all got find a ford. This being anticipated, Company I under the through, and held that gate, mind you, under fire, while command of Captain Greer was ordered to go down the dozens of bullets were whizzing by with their intended valley and hold two fords, the first one a little more than mission of death. Every one of us boys thanked that girl four miles down the creek below the bridge, the second . . . as we went through the opened way on a dead run; one a mile and a half still farther down.19 Captain Greer some of them said “God bless you.” Then when we were held the first ford and detailed Lieutenant [William J.] through, the girl shut the gate and ran into the house. Drew and twenty men to go and hold the second ford as Away we went into a cornfield like a bunch of Indians, long as possible.20 Now this creek had rather steep banks scared half to death, for behind was five to one against which were muddy and dangerous, but out in the stream, us, all eager to take us prisoners. The corn in the field was the creek bottom was firm and good. This gave us some high and our horses tore a swathe through this forty feet slight advantage. Everyone was ordered to not build any wide. We got away all right, but it was a good run. Up on fires as that would be sure to give us away to our enemies. a little ridge a quarter of a mile away Lieutenant Drew After a while it began to be light and then we could looked back toward the house where the girl had opened build fires. And then, out from my saddle pocket I pulled the gate for us, and could see the Johnnies were going my old sweet potato and placed it in a bed of hot coals to back below the house and some of them were firing into bake. All the fellows around there crowded around my the house. Lieutenant Drew shook his fist at them, saying, fire, asking dozens of questions and giving advice about “You fellows hurt a hair of that girl’s head and I will come my potato. One little fellow wanted me to save him an back here and blow your crowd into hell!” eye, another one wanted to hold it for me on a board For a long time our little bunch of men rode after that, while I ate it, and still another said that sweet potatoes until finally Lieutenant Drew said, “We must be about far was dangerous to have inside of one, ‘cause his old aunt enough back, the artillery firing sounds away back in the got blowed up by eatin’ one, one time. Had to watch rear of us now.” So all hands then rode to the top of a them, to keep them from stealing my sweet potato. little ridge and looked over; much to our surprise, there Had just about got my sweet potato good and hot, when below in the road was cavalry, marching four abreast as a picket fired a shot and right on the heels of that shot far as we could see up and down the road. Lieutenant came the order to fall in. Quick as I could, and that wasn’t Drew asked them who they were. They replied, “We are long, [I] raked my potato out of the coals and shoved it Marmaduke’s men,” and laughed, and then again “Jim into my saddle pocket and away we went. You see our Lane’s Tads” rolled up to us from a dozen throats.21 Their boys had had a couple of hours of pretty good rest and it captain ordered “Fire!” without any preliminary maneu- seemed a little uncanny somehow, everything for a time vers whatever, which they did and quick, too, and then being so still and quiet there. Up on a little ridge we went, a big bunch of their men came on a run for us; there was and there hailed some soldiers down in the timber. They nothing to do but run for it, back over the way we came; said they were Yankees, soon however they proved to be but hold, whoa, stop, before we knew it, we were right in Johnnies, for they came for us. Across a field we “hit it up” front of another column of cavalry marching four abreast but were losing ground, so Lieutenant Drew ordered us to coming toward us some three hundred yards away. This make for a house up on a hill where there could be seen a rattled all of our little band, because we had just crossed big gate and a girl standing outside by the house. over down there a few minutes before, and surely there was not a single trooper anywhere sight. It was folly to turn back, death to go ahead, so the only way out was to run with them a race for our lives.

19. Captain James E. Greer. Except for a disapproving comment from Moonlight, he left little trace in the record of Price’s raid, but figured more prominently in accounts of Indian warfare in 1865. 20. Monnett wrote confusingly: “Captain Greer with Company I was sent south two miles down the [north-flowing] river” (Action Before Westport, 54). Moonlight confirmed that the movement was to the 21. Major General John S. Marmaduke, one of three division north. Johnny, however, exaggerated the distances. Greer was a mile commanders under Price; James Henry Lane, Jayhawker, Union general downstream from the principal crossing, near East Blue Mills Road; and U.S. Senator from Kansas. Here, of course, Marmaduke’s men Second Lieutenant William J. Drew was somewhat beyond that. were joking.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 187 Down to a house along a little creek we rode and jumped our horses over a fallen tree close by the side of the house, when there was a better way around the house; but [we] didn’t know it, being pressed so hard we were a little rattled, or couldn’t think fast enough, don’t know which. Then the people in the house commenced firing at us, which made our position still worse; so out into a cornfield we went, couldn't find no hole to crawl into; had to do something. At the edge of this cornfield was a swamp, and that swamp didn’t look a bit inviting to our men, especially when everything depended on a few precious moments. “Into it!” Lieutenant Drew shouted. “We can’t be taken prisoners here!” And into it we went, and by good fortune made the other side easier than expected, as slough grass held up our horses pretty good considering the weight of our steeds. As we gained the bank and solid footing once more, here in front of us was a steep hill that had to be made on double-quick, which tried our horses and worried us. Here Jim Lane’s Tads, who had by this time gained considerable distance on us, began to shower a perfect rain of bullets over our heads. Everyone after that went for himself up that hill, getting behind big trees, something in the fashion a wild turkey will do in the wild woods to evade the man with a gun. You see, our horses were all fresh mounts and were able to hold their own; while our enemy’s horses were pretty good too, but they This map of the Battle of Westport was created by “A. Konig,” Second couldn’t go into the wind quite so keen as ours, and that Colorado Cavalry, and published in 1865 as part of the “Battle Grounds is the only reason our outfit got out of the jaws of two in Missouri during Price's Raid.” The Second Colorado made up the bulk of the Fourth Brigade, commanded by that regiment’s Colonel columns of steel and muscle and up on the hillside in the James H. Ford, during the battle and subsequent pursuit of Price’s comparatively safe refuge of the timber. Confederates. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and But nearly halfway up this hill, my “bunkie,” Tom Map Division, Washington, D.C. Roderick (the second one to be killed) got shot in the back, and fell off his horse.22 Lieutenant Drew examined him in a hurry, and Tom was begging us not to leave him, so I started back to him. “Go on!” Lieutenant Drew ordered. our eyes there to stand we saw. The Johnnies were shoot- “You can’t help him now, his back is broke.” “Well,” I ing Tom Roderick to death, finishing him then and there; said, “don’t want to leave him here, that’s pretty tough.” but that, even, was some consolation as it put him out of “Yes it is, Johnny, but some more of us will get it, if we his misery. don’t get out of here!” Away we went hunting our company. . . . We had to Up on the top of the hill, just before we went scurrying make a ride away out to one side to get around the John- away, one more look we must have, down through the nies coming up the valley. It was evident the Johnnies trees to where our comrade lay, and something hard for must have crossed the ford where Captain Greer and the rest of our company was last seen on duty. What had become of them? That was the question. If they had to fall back, why was we not notified in time? . . . 22. The identity of the fallen soldier was unclear. There was no Tom When we did we did finally get in [we were] an angry Roderick in Company I on the “Roster and Descriptive Roll,” although there was a John F. Roderick. No Roderick was listed among the bunch and there had to be an explanation. The truth of casualties in Cutler and Andreas, History of Kansas, 197. the thing was that Captain Greer fell back when the first

188 Kansas History shot was fired across the creek and that he got scared at fter this incident nearly everyone in Company the ford ordering his men to fall back leaving us in igno- I called Captain Greer a coward, and would rance of his move; therefore we were flanked and came not go willingly into tight places with him in very near being taken prisoners.23 command without a kick and a grumble. The morale of the soldiers under him was gone. Eventually ACaptain Greer left his command and went to Kansas City, turning the company over to Lieutenant Drew who then 23. Moonlight reported that Greer “retired without firing a shot, commanded as acting captain. Captain Greer was not a but claims that it was not possible to do otherwise, as the enemy were crossing at all points.” “Report of Colonel Thomas Moonlight,” War of soldier and could not face bullets without great mental the Rebellion, 592. strain. At the same time he was a good intelligent man.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 189 He did come back and wear his spurs with honor later in battles with the Indians.

It was west of the Little Blue, according to Monnett, that Blunt divided his forces as earlier described, making stand after stand. The afternoon closed with a street fight in Independence, where Johnny was slightly wounded by a shot from a window. Around midnight Company I arrived at a site on the Blue River previously fortified by the Kansas Militia. This was probably Simmons Ford, in modern Blue River Park.

FROM “MY BUNKIES”

Major General Alfred Pleasonton (standing, center), pictured here The following incident, reported only in the second and later with his staff in October 1863, was an 1844 graduate of West Point manuscript, was dated Saturday, October 22, the eve of the with an impressive record of service before and during the first years Battle of Westport proper. That morning, Price had found an of the Civil War prior to his transfer to the Western Theater. Moving unguarded ford, Hinkle’s, and poured his troops across. Johnny out of Jefferson City, Pleasonton’s command caught up with Price on experienced another attempted crossing. the Blue River. “We could see at the bottom of the hill, where Johnnies were lining up and counting off, about three regiments of cavalry,” Hart recalled. “About the time they were lined up and ready for action, We were about three or four miles southwest of West- here through the timber of the Blue came Pleasonton’s cavalry, about port at a ford (on the Blue). We were having it hot and three regiments of cavalry. They came out below us and formed as they heavy. All were angry and nervous. The Johnnies had came. We knew there was going to be something doing pretty soon. crossed the ford and were coming and forming too sure Three thousand cavalry of Pleasonton going to match their strength with an equal number of Johnnies. We shouted at the top of our voices, of themselves to suit our company. We were held in a we stood up in our stirrups as if to make our noise carry farther.” line close up where we could see a Johnny officer riding Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, a white horse and coaxing his men to hold the line. He Washington, D.C. rode back and forth on a run. All our men tried to shoot his horse from under him, but he seemed to be charmed. This was one thing that exasperated us. Someone hallooed “Charge!” and away we went after weaken now? I bow my head in shame before boys I that officer riding the white horse. Into the Johnnies we trusted and considered equal to anything under the sun.” bolted. After that officer we ran around and around, Then Colonel Moonlight rode on down the line saying and came near capturing him a dozen times in a dozen something about “how foolish some people are even after minutes. Finally the officer discovering we wanted him, they have been trained.” he dived into the ford where his horse fell down and the fine officer tumbled into the water rolling under a wagon. On the afternoon of Saturday, October 22, General Blunt We caused a jam at that ford and stopped the Johnnies heard artillery to the south and understood that Price had from crossing over to our side and whipped them plumb crossed the river on the Union right. He ordered Colonel Moon- out capturing a bunch of prisoners on the side for our light to Hinkle’s Ford. Arriving too late to hinder the crossing, pains. But this charge without authorized orders from an Moonlight retreated toward Shawnee Mission before joining officer was a bad move even if it was successful and did in a vigorous counterattack that averted collapse.24 Company I a lot of good. was engaged again Sunday morning in the Battle of Westport Colonel Moonlight raged and swore and rested for proper, first pushing forward and then retreating as Price recov- breath, and then started in on us again. “Boys,” he said, ered ground. Johnny described these events only in summary “we are fighting this campaign for a principle, for what and may have conflated two days’ actions. we think is right. Don’t ever charge again without orders from an officer, be honorable, be dependable. Your charge was successful, because unexpected on all sides; but if it hadn’t have been, we would be in a fine position now. 24. Blunt, “General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences,” You have stood firm against shot and shell before. Why 256; Monnett, Action Before Westport, 80–81, 84.

190 Kansas History ur next battle was about six miles from what was then the baby Kansas City. It was called the Battle of Westport and the end of the Price advance. Westport was the big town then. Price forced us by Westport in a mighty hard drive, flanked us Oand drove us off the field about used up. This was on Sunday morning and this time we lost sixteen men out of the company.25 We had been fighting five to one. Price moved up south of Westport and commenced to throwing shells into Westport. We were whipped this day good and plenty and we all were feeling mighty blue. Sixteen out of our company when we counted off did not make for very pleasant thoughts just then. Down, down in the blues we had sunk and blacker and blacker the awful thing crowded over our eyes. Lieutenant Drew was all covered over dust and mud and his uniform half torn from his precious body. And Lieutenant Clancy was in the same condition. It hurts soldiers to see their officers used up, especially when they were men who were always in the lead and no cowards. Lieutenant Drew said, “Boys, there isn’t so many of us now. I want those boys back.”

Later on Sunday, Company I remained near Shawnee Mission, positioned to block any move by Price into Kansas. Born in Arbroath, Scotland, in 1833, Thomas Moonlight set sail for From this spot, Johnny witnessed the juncture—or a junc- America at age thirteen and enlisted in the regular army in May 1853. ture—of Pleasonton’s forces with those of Curtis and Blunt. He was discharged at Fort Leavenworth in 1858 and settled on a farm Johnny gave the time as “after four o’clock,” though Pleason- in Leavenworth County. With the outbreak of war in 1861, Moonlight ton’s breakthrough occurred between noon and one.26 raised a light battery and was commissioned captain of artillery, but on September 20, 1862, he mustered as lieutenant colonel of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry and took command of the regiment when Colonel Our company and several others were on a hill where Thomas Ewing, Jr., was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers in we could see away down on the Blue. The air was clear the spring of 1863. A year later Moonlight was assigned to command and we could see a long way. We were lined up on this hill the Second Brigade, District of Southern Kansas, and in this capacity and counting off. Something was going to happen pretty engaged General Price at Westport and beyond in October 1864. “We loved Colonel Moonlight,” remembered Hart, “we worshipped him, it soon. We had been everywhere this Sunday and saw was heavenly to have him lecture us in his plain honest way. He had things changing before our eyes as in a dream. Whipped . . . a wonderful amount of good common sense right over his eyes by the Johnnies in the morning and in turn they were balancing the front side of his head straight on ahead through calms whipped by us to a showdown and were on the retreat. and through storms.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and We could see at the bottom of the hill, where Johnnies Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. were lining up and counting off, about three regiments of cavalry. About the time they were lined up and ready for action, here through the timber of the Blue came Pleasonton’s cavalry, about three regiments of cavalry. They came out below us and formed as they came. We knew there was going to be something doing pretty soon. Three thousand cavalry of Pleasonton[’s] going to 25. Official records do not support such a high loss. See Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, 1861–1865, xxxix, and Cutler and match their strength with an equal number of Johnnies. Andreas, History of Kansas, 195. We shouted at the top of our voices, we stood up in our 26. Hinton, Rebel Invasion of Missouri and Kansas, 173; “Reports of Major-General Alfred Pleasonton, U.S. Army, Commanding Provisional stirrups as if to make our noise carry farther. Colonel Cavalry Division,” in The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, 337. Moonlight ordered all the line officers and sergeants in

Under Moonlight in Missouri 191 Samuel J. Reader, Second Kansas State Militia, captured here the confusion and “chaos” of the battle on the Blue River, October 22, 1864.

front to keep us from charging. He wanted to make sure ing the front side of his head straight on ahead through we obeyed orders. “I’ll give you the charge in time, if calms and through storms.27 Pleasonton’s men cannot handle their end of the line. You We knew they drew their sabers because of the sun’s wild-eyed, daredevil bunch, hold still! I’ll say When!” reflection on their steel. We could hear the bugle sound the Colonel Moonlight shouted. We loved Colonel Moonlight, we worshipped him, it was heavenly to have him lecture us in his plain honest 27. By most accounts, Moonlight had plenty of “self-esteem.” Johnny, way. He had very little self-esteem, but a wonderful however, experienced him as friendly and not at all arrogant, as several amount of good common sense right over his eyes balanc- episodes omitted here attest.

192 Kansas History charge. We could see that line of cavalry advance forward, hard and seasoned as he was, forgot himself and ceased then in a little while the bugle sounded the double quick to breathe now and then, then he would catch himself and then the whole line of men lunged forward. They and slap his leg in downright earnestness. He was a intended to do something that evening, and that line of true soldier. Price[’s] cavalry would have to fight. We cheered, we Round and round, up and at it, across and over and were excited, we wanted to be in on that charge, and down, then all over again, continuous, everlasting and all the time that line of Johnnies stood there, they never death. Then, [we] could see breaking, running, hurry- showed the white feather, they were as good as our boys, ing and scurrying, the Johnnies were going, they were and why not? Weren’t they born under America’s stars? whipped. The Yankees did not follow them, they were too And weren’t they our brothers? near used up and had about all they wanted before the sun went down. It was worth living a lifetime to see this loser and closer Pleasonton’s cavalry advanced, charge of the Blue and the Grey. now they were within about one hundred Afterward we could see hundreds of horses down and yards of the Johnnies, all on the double quick in men administering to a wounded comrade. And then an earnest. And then we could see a soldier here orderly came on the dead run to Colonel Moonlight. Then and there along the line speed up and leave his comrades, the order came to march. We started out on the trot uphill Cdaredevils they were, going to meet their death ahead of and along the line of Price’s retreat in between Price and their time. Now our line was up close to the Johnnies and the Kansas line. General Price wanted to get into Kansas, the Johnnies still stood there, don’t believe they batted and we were determined he should not.28 an eye. It was steel against steel, muscle against muscle, sand against sand, fate against fate, all in the twinkling The next episode is titled “Shelling the Johnnies out of the of an eye. Bloody Lane.” Bloody Lane was the name applied to Wornall’s We stood up in our stirrups and well-nigh forgot to Lane (now busy Wornall Road) after a guerilla force under breathe, so intensely interested did we become watching George Todd, part of Quantrill’s group, ambushed a party this game of real life. Then that whole line of Johnnies of Union soldiers there on June 17, 1863. The location was fired, three thousand bullets good for three thousand between 51st and 55th Streets.29 Union horses, or three thousand Union providing they all hit the mark; but it is hard to fire true in the face of an Our company was lined up and counting off when a onrush of men and horses, it is hard to keep down the heavy brass battery of eight pieces from General Pleason- quiver and tension of muscles. The eye is apt to overrate ton drove in front of us.30 It proved that we had at last the distance and fool you on the bead and a rapid heart united our forces and would wage war all together from beating under excitement does not make for accurate now on, instead of two separate units as heretofore. We shooting at the mark. And that is the answer why our greeted them with all the cheers we could and went half boys were not stayed in the advance of their charge. wild, and kept it up. The officers finally restored order. The line did reel and sway, and horses and men went But such an outfit. Our boys looked bad and dilapi- down. We could see men leave their wounded horses and dated, but these men of Pleasonton[’s] clapped anything continue the charge on foot, unswayed, undaunted, and [we] had ever seen before. Their captain wore a cap which unwhipped. Why shouldn’t we cheer? Why shouldn’t we had nothing left to it but a rim and the cap part over the feel the wonderful thrill of a lifetime? eyes. His hair was all fussed up and protruding out and Now that line all mixed up, two and two waging a battle, three and three, and bunches here and there. And all the time the line widening, scattering out. It was like, excuse the comparison, six thousand dog fights on a plain waging a battle of life and death, all equally 28. Despite his weakness, Price was expected to strike at Fort Scott, but he decided against it, reentered Missouri north of town, and headed matched, all trained under fire and all brothers under our south to Fayetteville, Arkansas. See Langsdorf, “Price’s Raid and the beloved American stars. Good all of them, the Yankee and Battle of Mine Creek,” 78–99. See also Lause, The Collapse of Price’s Raid, chap. 10. the Johnny. 29. Wiley Britton, The Civil War on the Border (New York: G. P. The outcome of that charge was in doubt for some Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 2:133; The Union Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States, 1861–65, vol. 6, Cyclopedia Of Battles—Helena Road to Z little time, no living being could predict correct, a minute (Madison, Wisc.: Federal Publishing Company, 1908), 921. rolled by in the time of an hour. Even Colonel Moonlight, 30. The metal was more likely bronze, not brass.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 193 above the cap rim like a garden that had gone to seed for the one beside them, one quirt apiece. Most of the pieces ages. His remnant of a uniform resembled a rag wagon. had ten spans of horses pulling them and large horses at On one trousers’ leg a large piece of carpet had been that. These pieces were larger and heavier than anything wired and tied in lieu of the missing portion long since we had in the way of artillery under General Blunt. . . . passed from service. Both of his arms were honored by In front of us was a board fence. The captain and his common pieces of gunnysacks patched on here and there, bugler jammed their horses right into the board fence as if and he hadn’t shaved for so long, his beard looked like it was a piece of paper. The horses leaned their shoulders a bramble bush. But his eyes shone keen and bright and against the board fence and lunged, they knew what to fairly snapped with fire.31 do and the captain and his bugler braced their feet against the boards. Through they went in a couple of seconds and he artillery men looked worse than tramps. They right behind them the artillery on the dead run. When were all patched up with pieces of carpet and the artillery struck the board fence it went into kindling gunnysacks like their captain, and like him all wood in a jiffy and then they went for the rail fence. But a unshaved. But few of them had a cap or hat, and few seconds ahead the captain and his bugler had pushed the ones bareheaded didn’t seem to miss their headgear the two top rails over, and right after them the artillery Tthe least bit in the world. Real soldiers they were, hard- knocked that rail fence into no resemblance of a fence at ened, nonchalant and ready for anything to come before all. It was a sight worth seeing, something to be proud them and test their might. Their horses were large, long of; true, our batteries did some wonderful work, but this and poor, so that their ribs could be plainly seen. These battery must have been a brag battery of the East sent out horses looked like Kentucky pure-breds, with now and to aid us, for all did splendid work and all with the bugle then the exception of a fat horse picked up somewhere to calls, both men and horses. . . . take the place of a horse that had died or been killed. After this big brass battery was clear of all fences My position in the line was at the end of the line and they made an excellent run for position which had been was close to the captain where he was talking to General planned by some of our generals in due regard for the Blunt and in speaking distance of some of the men. danger it would be placed in and the method of a quick “Aren’t you the men that is going to guard us while we retreat. It was known that the cornfield was full of John- pepper the Johnnies out of yonder cornfield, or wherever nies and that they were protected by their artillery, so it is we go?” one of them asked me. this position was not without danger, both from being Believe we are from the looks of things, I answered. charged by the Johnnies from the cornfield and their artil- “Well, we left some pretty good men. If you men are as lery fire. We could not march up the Bloody Lane to get at good as ours we will be all right.” them, so the cornfield had to be cleared, also if we could We will hold, never mind about that. We have been once get into action we could everlastingly wallop every- fighting night and day and would rather fight than eat, thing in that field. I answered. The captain and his artillery went like the wind. The “You will, will you! We’ll see about that! We have been men riding the caisson held on for dear life. A bugle call fighting night and day too. And we’re in just the right pierced the air and the first brass piece arrived at the place temper of mind to not care for anything. Now that we are where it was to unlimber, the riders whipping their horses in front of General Price we intend to make him sweat as they swerved around to a standstill and it seemed the blood if he advances any further.” old heavy gun rolled around on two wheels. Quickly that After we turned toward a large cornfield which looked bunch of men ran seemingly in a picked direction, but as if it might be two hundred acres in extent, the land each one was doing one thing. I remember one fellow that became more level. Here double-quick was sounded once carried the shells, he had a carpet on one half of his seat and more, the bugler sounding the call on the dead run. And the a wad of gunnysacks on the other and I couldn’t decide artillery horsemen each whipping the horse they rode and which side of him deserved the most curiosity. He ran with all his might to the caisson for solid shot; he jammed his foot up against the caisson to stop himself while the soldier there handed him the solid shot, then he tore back 31. Johnny’s description of the soldiers’ condition seems to belie the to the brass piece hard as he could hit it up a-running in a common assessment that Pleasonton’s pursuit of Price was lackadaisical. See, for instance, Mark A. Lause, Price’s Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion kind of a jump and a gallop, his legs ran and his body and of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 183. arms as well, but he got there and quick, too.

194 Kansas History der as they spun around and kicked back from their position. It was astonishing how quick these men could load their cannon after firing. How in deadly earnest they worked and so accurate and unerring. It was splendid, and well worthwhile to see. The solid shot from these guns fairly made my ears pop, as we were stationed right up close, but after a while [I] could only hear a keen sing ringing in my ears, and never afterwards could hear quite normal. Away went the solid shot through that cornfield and [we] could see cornstalks shoot straight up in the air when the shot hit them. The solid shot would hit the ground as intended, roll and bounce through the cornfield. There was a commotion in that cornfield as we could see rows of Johnnies mounting their horses. Our solid shot was making it so hot for them they hurriedly moved out of there. At the edge of the cornfield we could see dozens of riders leaving their horses as they had legs broken. All of them at first tried to go out of there by way of the Bloody Lane. Then the captain seeing the Johnnies going out the Bloody Lane ordered the cannon turned on the rock fence beside the Bloody Lane. And when a solid shot would hit that rock fence on an angle the rocks would fly in all directions ahead like a hundred different shots all at once flying through the air. This made it really bad business for the Johnnies in that lane that day. The Eleventh Kansas Cavalry included several notable Kansans, including two who Did not know the number of this were to serve in the U.S. Senate: Edmund G. Ross, captain of Company E, who was company of artillery then and never have promoted to major in May 1864; and Preston B. Plumb, who mustered in as captain found out, but they were of the first water, of Company C, but was soon promoted to major and then in May 1864 to lieutenant 32 colonel. When Colonel Moonlight was placed in charge of the Second Brigade, the the best of the land. twenty-seven-year-old Plumb took command of the regiment. In the aftermath of the battle, Johnny told of intervening to help a wounded Confederate officer.

And the powder man, him I nearly forgot. He ran After this cornfield and Bloody Lane battle we were smooth and fast, like a Kentucky thoroughbred. He ordered to go up on a hill past a Johnny gun that had didn’t have any patches on his seat at all, he needed them blown up where the Johnnies had established a tempo- to be sure, for there was two places where his pink skin rary hospital. There were plenty of wounded soldiers showed. You see it is very hard for artillerymen to keep the seat of their trousers from wearing out. They were firing before any of the others were and men would jump against the wheels with side and shoul- 32. The identity of the unit has yet to be determined.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 195 belonging to Price’s army there. One Southern soldier off the country. Just a little while we stopped and then on who was shot in the leg just above the knee and was an and on in a tiresome grind as if forever. The rain poured officer in spite of his years wore a splendid pair of new down all night and everybody became wet and covered boots. And as I thought of aiding him another man came more or less with mud, horses and men. Our command along and noticing his boots seized hold of his foot which stopped by a cornfield near midnight for I think one hour was swelled inside of the boot and the wounded leg. He and a half to let the horses have time to eat. Some of the pulled as hard as he could to get that boot off the officer’s boys hunched up under trees, others worn tired stopped foot, and the officer yelled in pain. I pulled a revolver on where they were and slept as best they could out in the the fellow and made him go clear off the hill. He said, pouring rain. For myself [I] rustled some poles and slabs “You ought to be on the Southern side, that’s where of the fence near there and laid them side by side with you belong.” one end a little higher than the other, then laid some corn I came back with my knife and cut the boots off both fodder on that for a bed. Laid down on this sumptuous the wounded officer’s feet. He said, “I thank you, sir. You bed, curling up in a knot and pulling my long cavalry are a gentleman. May God bless you even if you are of cape and coat combined over me, and then went to sleep the North.” like the rest out in the rain, but such a sleep, it was a good Oh that’s all right, I always aid boys of both sides when one and I got it in spite of the elements and the war. It they are in distress. It’s my duty, because after all we are refreshed me like nothing else could, not even hardtack. our brothers’ keepers. Then “Fall in! Fall in!” was sounded. It sounded away Then I stepped around and ordered that the officer off down through an earhorn and across a big canyon a be attended to right away. The fellow looked at me for mile deep, and the voice calling seemed hoarse with a a moment. Get at it! I ordered. Tie a bandage, stop blood weary shading mingled in with its tone. All were obedient away and stayed there and saw that it was done, no one though slow and sluggish in motion, for the machinery of objected to my giving orders, and that surprised me. But our bodies was fast running down, and we couldn’t get a Southern lad is entitled to as much consideration when enough to eat and sufficient sleep to ever wind up a heart wounded as any other man, and this one was decent clear that was losing beats. through and worthy. It always made a world of difference with me in the Keeping west of Price to block any deeper movement into manner another one spoke to me and how he conducted Kansas, Moonlight’s men missed the Battle of Mine Creek on himself for his own good. There is a soft spot of comrade- October 25, which cost the Confederates much of their remain- ship running through all men, arouse that and you are ing strength. The long marches and skirmishes continued for accommodated. several more days, but at one stop, not identifiable by location, Johnny finally found time to cook and eat his sweet potato.34 On the morning of Monday the twenty-fifth, the pursuit of Price southward along the state line began. The first days were Then once more [I] dug out my sweet potato, now intense, with several night marches for the Eleventh Cavalry, worn and dusty and flavored with a very nice powder taxing men and horses no less than the earlier phase of the smell.35 Then [I] split it into two halves and chucked them campaign. Some incidents Johnny assigned to the retreat from both in the hot ashes and coals. But that was not all, an Lexington almost certainly belonged to the pursuit period, like extra precaution and vigilance had to be kept up, even this bivouac in the rain: such a drenching was recorded for the while I slept. So a slightly heavy stick was laid over the night of October 24–25, not earlier.33 coals where my potato was roasting and on that stick my

The skies became cloudy and the clouds changed to a dull dark hue, which foretold rain. It was lucky for us that 34. For the pursuit of Price and the Battle of Mine Creek, see night that the commissary wagons finally reached us for Langsdorf, “Price’s Raid and the Battle of Mine Creek,” 78–99; Albert our rations had long since played out and we were living Castel, “War and Politics: The Price Raid of 1864,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 24 (Summer 1958): 129–43; Albert Castel, Civil War Kansas: Reaping the Whirlwind, rev. ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 184–202; Lumir F. Buresh, October 25th and the Battle of Mine Creek (Kansas City, Mo.: Lowell Press, 1977); Kip Lindberg, “Chaos Itself: The Battle of Mine Creek,” North & South 1 (no. 6, 1998): 74–85. 33. The two incidents that follow are from “Sweet Potatoes and 35. In an omitted incident, Johnny hurriedly stuffed the hot potato Other Stories.” into a saddle pocket containing grains of powder, which ignited, causing

196 Kansas History feet were placed to stand guard while my head slept a find about every two days a bunch of wounded and refreshing slumber it needed so very bad. Some part of sick Johnnies under the care of a doctor and helpers. We me had to stand guard or some other man would eat my always greeted them as if nothing of any consequence sweet potato and not I. . . . was between us. It was surprising how quick they would In less than half an hour I awoke and found my sweet warm up to us, talk about our continuous battle that potato roasted fine on one side, that was good enough lasted day and night, and the funny things that happened that near baked. So, I stuck a slice of bacon on a stick, along with the grind. We would laugh together, pass the then held it over the hot coals and soon had the grease tobacco around and make some fellow feel easier, and dropping over my one-half slice of sweet potato. Then don't you ever forget that the men of the South have a went to eating and bragging how fine my sweet potato way of thanking you that carries a season of hospitality was and smacking my lips to make the other fellows wish that charms. they had some too. I knew that bunch would make me One afternoon we rode into a farm that smacked of divide if my sweet potato looked too large, but leaving being well kept up and from the looks of things around one half of it in the coals saved me from trouble, but this about the proprietor must be well to do. We were out to half looked so small no one expected me to divide. one side of the line of Price[’s] retreat in search of food for But when I brought out the other and larger half our company and fodder for our horses. and another slice of bacon, the boys began to be a little We rode up to a fine brick house before going away nervous and take notice, suppose they thought my potato because Lieutenant Drew wished to learn the names of was swelling and toasting faster than I could eat it. One the people so as to keep a record of what things we had fellow said, “If someone would dare me I will take that taken belong to the right party. Lieutenant Drew made his sweet potato away from Johnny. He must have a wagon quest known to a lady that was standing on the porch of load of them under the coals.” the house who happened to be the wife of the man who Lieutenant Clancy could stand it no longer, so he owned the place, but her husband at the time was with found a stick and a slice of bacon which he warmed over General Price, so she said. the coals, then sat down beside me and commenced drop- “Yes!” she answered. “You Yanks are welcome to our ping grease on the other end of my sweet potato, thus things because there is no force here that can prevent you. really appropriating that end.36 We together finished it I suppose you men would take the house if it could be in short order. Lieutenant Clancy thought it was very toted away handy.” fine, [I] think it was all he could do to eat it with all that “No, Madam,” Lieutenant Drew answered, “we only powder flavor that was on the outside of it. want what is necessary to keep body and soul alive for a “Now, Johnny,” the Lieutenant said, “that is the last of little while. We are up against a hard proposition.” the sweet potato that has caused you some trouble and “You men would be up against a harder proposition, the rest of us as well. You ought to be in the guard house if General Price had more soldiers to fight you!” The lady for not having a better supply.” snapped back hard as flint. “I realize that fact. General Price is an able general, Several passages evoked the continuing decay of the Con- lady. Now please do not be afraid of our outfit. We are not federate army. Even in retrospect Johnny was not aware of the willingly robbing the country, we are forced to do these disputes and miscommunications that cost the Union com- things because we are hungry. General Price is doing the manders their chance to demolish that army completely. same thing and destroying what he cannot consume to keep us from having anything. It’s war and war is not Every morning we would find the graves where the kind to anybody.” Johnnies had buried their dead during the night. Usually “I don’t care. I hate! the Yanks! I despise the pesky ani- there would be stakes or slabs marking the graves and mals—I do!” the names of the ones that had passed on. And we would Then five more ladies came out on the porch. They wanted to take a good look at a Yank. They were inquisi- tive which is natural for the sex. The lady of the house continued, “Why don’t you have your men dressed in better clothing. I would be ashamed his horse to bolt. “Johnny,” Lieutenant Drew scolded, “you are a hoodoo for the whole company!” to go through a country looking like tramps. Do any of 36. Second Lieutenant James J. Clancy. you know what a razor is for?”

Under Moonlight in Missouri 197 “Dear lady, we used to have some idea what a razor approached. We surrounded them, covering all with is for, but that has been so long ago it seems like it has revolvers, then hallowed to them to wake up. Some of been a hundred years ago, and good clothes, we wouldn’t them hurried to their feet, others rubbed their eyes and know how to conduct ourselves in good clothes. then discovered they were trapped. At first showed they “Before we go away, would you ladies sing us a nice intended to scrap, but Lieutenant Drew told them to keep song. We are tired of this war and are all homesick. We quiet if they wished to live a while longer. need a little cheer even if we are ‘Yanks,’” Lieutenant They were quite angry and couldn’t figure out what Drew begged. He held his hand at salute and because our happened. Then one of their number said in an angry lieutenant showed that much respect, we all did the same. mood, “We will sing you a song if you will allow us to choose “We are caught like rats in a trap. I feel disgraced.” our song, and will not be angry with us after we have “That is about all there is to it. You men are caught, sung the song. If you agree to that, then we will sing.” so be good about it, if it’s in you,” Lieutenant Drew “We agree, lady. Go ahead please.” answered. Then the lady sang a [song] . . . which the South- “If I had known you were coming, no Yank would ern lads sang occasionally to appease their appetites. have taken me alive. It is bad to give up your life in battle, Don’t remember the words except the last lines, they but that is honorable compared to be caught asleep. Our were, “Come on ravens and crows and have a feast, for Lieutenant is the cause of this. He should have wakened Yankee flesh shall be your meat.” And when they came to us as agreed, and he alone is guilty. A fine man he is, flesh in their song every lady in that bunch would stomp worthy of nothing.” the floor of that porch as hard as they could. We made them come with us where they were made “Now what do you think of that, you men?" the prisoners of war in the rear in a bull-pen. lady asked. “It is splendid, your singing shows to have had some Toward the end of the manuscript, Johnny reported a suspi- training and your motive is well emphasized and marked. ciously inspirational conversation. Did it really occur about as Have never heard such fine singing in all my life before. written, or might it reflect not only the softening effect of time but Your professor must have a singing master of renown.” also deference to his wife, Corinna Siceloff, North Carolina–born? Then the Lieutenant thanked the lady and we Son Harry remarked in a note: “If I sing ‘Marching Through rode away. Georgia’ [I] must follow it up with ‘Dixie.’” The anecdote might also reflect the determination during the post-Reconstruction On November 4, the troops were in northern Arkansas, years to downplay the issue of slavery. Certainly Johnny barely where the company surprised a group of exhausted Confederate mentioned that fatal matter but returned again and again to the soldiers. need to preserve the strength of an undivided nation.

At or near Fayetteville, Arkansas our army ceased to Our forces did not follow General Price across the keep on the western side of Price as it was not necessary Arkansas River, as by that time the Johnnies were about to continue further on that plan, we were away from the used up, and their coming again into Missouri was very Kansas border. Here we were issued six hardtack and a doubtful. Then too the Arkansas rising made it extremely handful of sugar, one ration, and it could not go very far, dangerous to cross the river, General Price just barely but that is all could be had at the time. We had to live crossing with his troops in the nick of time. Our forces off the country. The Johnnies would kill a beef and skin then turned back to Kansas City vicinity. one side, cut half of the meat out, and go on if we were Now we could march at our leisure in the daytime and pushing too hard behind and then we would come along, sleep all the night minus the eternal rush and go and bat- turn the beef over, and skin the other side and cut out the tling. They had given us a hard tussle and while they were other half of the meat. Here we found an ocean of aban- in a bad way, we were not in a position to do much of the doned wagons and mules and horses staggering around braggado [sic]. They were our honorable enemy, and a part half dead. Their shoulders were worn to the bone, a hard of our blood and race; and that is the reason why they were looking bunch of stock. so confounded hard to whip out of Missouri. In the afternoon we rode up on about twenty John- nies sleeping beside a little creek. They were all dead Our little dried-up fellow was still alive and healthy as for sleep which was why they did not waken when we an old-fashioned pine-knot, and more sassy and important

198 Kansas History “Ain’t one of my brothers fighting in the Southern army this minute, and ain’t I fighting in the North? My mother is in the South, stickin’ up for the South, livin’ for the South, ready to die for the South—and one of my sisters married a Northern man. “That makes our family mixed in the land. And we’re a mixed country of people. We got to take ‘er all mixed, with one universal language. “Ain’t it so?”

fter the Price campaign, the Eleventh Kansas was again ordered to the frontier, where Johnny took part in the Battle of Platte Bridge, AJuly 26, 1865, near modern Casper, Wyoming. One of the volunteers who rode out under Caspar Collins to confront a Lakota/Cheyenne war party, Hart saw Collins carried off to his doom on the back of his bolting horse (events also recounted in the memoir). Company I was mustered out at Fort Leavenworth on Septem- ber 26, 1865. Two years later Johnny went west again with his brother Hugh, alight- ing at Fort C. F. Smith on the Bozeman Johnny Hart was a private in Company I of the Eleventh Kansas, which was composed of Trail in the middle of Red Cloud’s recruits mainly from Grasshopper Falls, Jefferson County, and Burlingame, Osage County. War. He took lucrative but risky jobs Pictured here are four of Johnny Hart’s Eleventh Kansas comrades, members of Company G: including hay harvest (he was at the Private Fox Winne and Chief Bugler N.D. Horton, seated; regimental saddler Sergeant Henry engagement known as the Hayfield Barnes and First Sergeant Henry Boothe, standing. All listed their residence as Manhattan, as Fight), poisoning wolves under gov- did the majority of the company’s initial recruits. ernment contract, and, he reports, carrying mail between Fort Smith than usual.37 I asked him what he thought about the war in and Fort Phil Kearny. Returning to Kansas, he married Missouri. Corinna Siceloff in Leavenworth in 1871 and helped to “Why,” he answered, “it’s all right. We were fighting found the Elk County town of Canola (fused into modern to keep our brothers of the South with us. We need ‘em, Grenola in 1879). In 1881 he moved the family west for we must have ‘em. We cannot afford to divide our Stars good, homesteading a valley, still called Hart’s Basin, in and Stripes for any kind of a trumped-up charge. We Delta County, Colorado. He served a term in the Colorado can’t both be victorious over each other, but we can be a House of Representatives and died in Eckert, Colorado, helluva nation all together. in 1928.

37. The same unidentified Union soldier who kidded Johnny about his sweet potato at Lexington.

Under Moonlight in Missouri 199 REVIEWS

The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History by Jon K. Lauck 166 pages, notes, index. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013, cloth, $35.00.

Along with Jon Lauck’s many other friends, I have long been impressed by his erudition, energy, and passion. All of those qualities are displayed in The Lost Region. At bottom, this study is a plea for recognition by historians of the national and international significance of the Midwest and for a renewed commitment to studying the region’s history. As Lauck effectively demonstrates, in the first half of the twentieth century, midwestern history was a vital and prominent field. The “Prairie Historians,” as he calls them, mostly midwestern-born students or admirers of Frederick Jackson Turner, created the Mississippi Valley Historical Association as a counter to the elitist American Historical Association, built vital state historical societies and university departments, and created journals to feature regional scholarship—most notably a bit of self-pity. Yes, the elitists on the coasts derogate the the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, now the Journal of Midwest, but that goes both ways. Has a midwestern political American History. candidate ever lost a vote by beating up on Wall Street bankers In their scholarship, R. Carlyle Buley, John D. Hicks, or the “Hollywood liberals?” And sometimes Lauck sounds Merle Curti, Frederic Paxson and the other Prairie Historians like a conspiracy thinker, as when he warns of the “underlying emphasized midwestern—often Turnerian—themes, such as cultural Marxism” (p. 77) in the profession and its nefarious the national and international significance of the region and its purposes. central contribution to the development of American democracy The main weakness in The Lost Region is that Lauck oversells and civic cultural vitality. They were not generally theorists, but his case. The history of the Midwest and of the states of the were objective, empirical researchers devoted to making their region is not taught much in colleges and universities, and work accessible to a broad public. that shameful omission should be rectified. But midwestern After World War II their influence waned. As early as the history continues to appear in journals, and historians continue 1920s they were beset by elitist critics from the East such as H. to produce good work on the region and to supervise graduate L. Mencken, and by the 1930s Turner and his followers were students writing dissertations on midwestern topics. Lauck increasingly attacked by younger scholars from outside the concedes as much, but he seems to want the kind of history region. After the war the mainstream of the profession changed Frederick Merk or Everett Dick did to be done again, and that course, increasingly embracing social science theories, focusing is not going to happen. Nobody echoes U. B. Phillips’s style attention on issues of race, class, and gender, and moving away of history anymore, but southern history has not gone away. from the economic and political history emphasized by the Prairie Midwestern history is being done—it’s just not the self-conscious Historians. As this happened, the regional historical identity— and regionally chauvinistic midwestern history turned out by never as vital as in the South, West, or New England—melted the Prairie Historians. away. The regional journals—most notably the Mississippi Valley That being said, Lauck’s call for a renaissance of midwestern Historical Review—were lost or transformed. And midwestern history is clear and timely. The Midwest is a difficult region to colleges and universities dropped regional history and even define, but its significance is central to what the United States state history from their course offerings. is about. As Jon Lauck demonstrates, we have to do a better job As a pigs-is-pigs historian who spent thirty-six years of telling that story, and that effort needs to begin in the teaching and writing in North Dakota, I found myself nodding Midwest itself. enthusiastically when reading Lauck’s condemnations of arrogant eastern elitists and the history profession’s interpretive hegemons. But sometimes he crosses the line between analysis Reviewed by David B. Danbom, independent scholar, Loveland, and polemic. There is special pleading in places here, and even Colorado.

200 Kansas History The Geography of Resistance: Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad by Cheryl Janifer LaRoche xviii + 232 pages, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014, cloth $85.00, paper $25.00.

Cheryl LaRoche’s The Geography of Resistance provides a timely addition to our growing knowledge of Underground Railroad activities in the North. Using free black communities in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio as an outlet for investigation, she examines the connections between free black communities and escaped slaves seeking freedom. Her experience as a public historian allows her to incorporate techniques from historical archaeology and maximize use of oral histories and community studies, making this study truly interdisciplinary and of interest to lay readers and scholars alike. LaRoche’s goal is to foreground the black perspective and challenge traditional narratives of the Underground Railroad, which generally privilege white “conductors” as the paragons of selfless sacrifice, an interpretive framework that ignores the ways that free blacks in the North were central to the movement’s success. She argues that black communities, in particular institutions such as churches and fraternal organizations, were key orchestrators of slave escapes, offering refuge to fugitives as well as guidance on how to adapt to life as free people of color. More specifically, she contends that these networks to freedom worked for the antislavery cause. Chapter seven ties family, were intimately tied to established black denominations, such community, and religious establishments together as pillars of as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, whose members black communities, sites of collaboration and, more importantly, used their own routes and safe houses. socially acceptable cloaks for Underground Railroad activity. This The Geography of Resistance is organized in three parts. The first chapter includes two particularly useful maps that help readers section offers case studies of four locations on the Underground visualize these communities’ locations along established routes. Railroad. Chapter one focuses on Rocky Fork, Illinois, a rural Chapter eight expands the analysis to fraternal organizations, community near Alton, Illinois, home to an especially rich oral such as the Freemasons, and interracial conventions for racial tradition of black resistance. The next two chapters home in on equality that promoted black self-help and the adoption of Miller Grove, Illinois (a previously unrecognized site), and Lick middle-class values. LaRoche’s final chapter reinforces her Creek, Indiana, as they highlight the importance of interracial interpretation that black churches, and the black settlements of organizations like the American Missionary Association and the which they were a part, were a significant force in shaping black Quaker Church in building freedom operations. Chapter four migration on the Underground Railroad. focuses more intently on black operators in Poke Patch, Ohio, Although LaRoche’s research is extensive, the book had room who first gained attention through Wilbur Siebert’s extensive for improvement. LaRoche often uses terms like “landscapes research at the turn of the twentieth century. of freedom” and “geography of resistance” without clearly Part two, comprising chapters five and six, explores the defining or explaining them. The inclusion of case studies also “geography of resistance” that runs central to her narrative, means that the book sometimes lacks a cohesive voice, although providing a synthetic perspective to contextualize the previous it is in these four case studies that one sees her most effective use case studies. These two chapters discuss how landscapes were of archaeological methodology. In addition, some portions could key to the Underground Railroad and how blacks interacted have benefitted from more convincing evidence and deeper with their surroundings, using their knowledge of the terrain to analysis. Despite these criticisms, however, anyone fascinated their advantage. Waterways, caves, iron forges, established black by the Underground Railroad and black resistance more broadly churches, and well-traveled routes through the countryside will profit from this volume. were literal, traceable pathways for black migration. The third and final section focuses on black communities, Reviewed by Kristen K. Epps, assistant professor of history, particularly black churches and fraternal organizations, that University of Central Arkansas, Conway.

Reviews 201 Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression by David M. Wrobel xv + 312 pages, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014, cloth $39.95.

The American West has provided a destination for generations of travelers in search of dramatic landscapes and novel cultural experiences. In Global West, American Frontier, historian David M. Wrobel deploys an encyclopedic knowledge of the travel narratives visitors left behind in order to illustrate that they approached the West laden with contemporary concerns about the region and the world. The study is oriented around two premises. First, Wrobel argues that nineteenth-century visitors entered the West within the context of global voyages of exploration. In the second half of the book, Wrobel surveys the experiences of twentieth-century visitors who approached the West within a more confined regional or national context— Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Muir, and Theodore seeking to find an authentic place in an age of modernization and Roosevelt provide color and texture, as each explorer situated standardization. This periodization drives the broad outlines of his own adventures within the context of continuing to this book and offers some structure for the author’s expansive explore the farthest reaches of an ever-shrinking world. A brief synopses of dozens of travel narratives. fourth chapter, “The End of the West,” examines the writings The volume is compiled from a series of lectures that began of automobile tourists in the West. Automobilists’ accounts with Wrobel’s 2003 Calvin Horn Lecture at the University of reinforce the author’s assessment that “the frontier era, the great New Mexico. Each chapter explores familiar themes in western age of western and southwestern distinctiveness, had passed history by weaving travelers’ accounts through the text. The first away as the crush of commerce and modernity arrived” (p. chapter, “Exceptionalism and Globalism,” counters the idea that 125). A long final chapter, “Rediscovering the West,” surveys the western travelers engaged with the region expecting an inherent Federal Writers’ Project guides to the western states, providing “exceptionalism” in the West. Here Wrobel uses travel narratives an incongruous last section. These New Deal–commissioned to argue that it is better to approach this moment within a guides portray a different approach to surveying the West, and global imperial context, in keeping with developments in the Wrobel’s expansive summaries of their content are incongruous rest of the world during this period. “The World in the West, with the travelers’ texts upon which the remainder of Global the West in the World,” highlights the expansive perspective of West, American Frontier is based. most travel writers during the nineteenth century. By merging In some ways the sweeping purview of this book diminishes seemingly disparate explorations in Africa and the arid West, its effectiveness, and while it provides an excellent introduction Wrobel illustrates that travelers often experienced the West as to the vast travel literature of the nineteenth and twentieth part of a global set of landscapes and cultural phenomena. Here centuries, it does not achieve the systematic textual analysis as elsewhere, however, the author’s enchantment with the genre that readers might have expected. Overall, however, this of travel writing and his penchant to summarize unfortunately study provides a provocative overview of the meanings of the lead him to neglect the interpretative threads that might bind American West during the period between the 1840s and 1940s, together this disparate volume of essays. and, perhaps most importantly, it “offers a new ear to some old In the book’s second half, Wrobel turns to the early twentieth voices that deserve another hearing” (p. 4). As David Wrobel century, suggesting that the perceived closing of the American has so ably observed, travel writers from across the globe who frontier drew a new generation of visitors who traveled to the reflected on the nature of the West offer a new perspective on the region in search of an “authentic” West. The third chapter, mythic region and its cultural history, and students of Kansas “No, Adventure is Not Dead,” suggests that these travel and the broader West would benefit from a reintroduction to writers “helped keep the western frontier alive in the public these compelling texts. consciousness, thereby fortifying the storehouse of American western exceptionalism” even “in the face of the forces of first Reviewed by Sara M. Gregg, associate professor of history, modernization and then globalization” (p. 85). The travels of University of Kansas, Lawrence.

202 Kansas History Sunflower Justice: A New History of the Kansas Supreme Court by R. Alton Lee xii + 388 pages, notes, index. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2014, cloth $65.00.

Professor R. Alton Lee, Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of South Dakota, has put every legal historian, historian of the American West, and Kansas lawyer in his debt by writing Sunflower Justice, a historical survey of the development both of the Kansas Supreme Court and of Kansas law generally from the beginnings of the state in its territorial period to the present day. The nine principal chapters of the book proceed chronologically, and each contains brief biographies of the justices of the period as well as extensive discussion of those cases that Lee judges most significant in the development of the law of Kansas. Importantly, Lee does not simply recite the bare bones of the cases he mentions but puts these cases in their social and historical contexts. He also relates these Kansas cases to legal trends in the broader nation, both judicial and legislative. One of the most difficult tasks faced by anyone writing the history of a state court over more than a century and a half is sheer volume. The Kansas Supreme Court has decided tens of thousands of cases during its existence, and these cases deal with thousands of legal principles. The simplest method of dealing with this huge quantity of reports is to provide a survey of the main topics covered in the decisions and to select the most important cases for longer discussion. This is precisely what Lee has done. Thus, as one reads through the book one gets a strong sense of how the Kansas Supreme Court handled those matters of the greatest legal and social import, including everything from homestead laws to prohibition to labor law to criminal conspiracy. The danger of this approach, of which Professor Lee is well aware, is one of superficiality, but he avoids this by providing enough detail about the most important cases and footnotes that can direct the reader to more detailed accounts. Professor Lee has a wonderful eye not only for picking out those cases of the greatest social and legal significance for cases such as Anthony, Lee gives readers a true picture of the discussion but also for choosing cases that demonstrate the Court and its justices. nooks and crannies of every state legal system as well as the In his introduction, Lee quotes James Willard Hurst, one of particular social characteristics of Kansas. His discussions of the greatest American legal historians of the twentieth century, the ways in which the Kansas Supreme Court dealt with new who wrote that the task of a legal historian is to demonstrate technologies such as railroads, automobiles, and airplanes could “how the law has really worked in social experience.” Professor stand as a model for anyone attempting to show how science Lee has obviously taken this advice to heart and followed and technology affect the progress of the law. Among the more it in writing this wonderful volume. Sunflower Justice is an interesting cases that highlight Kansas in particular is Anthony important book and should be read by every American legal v. Haldeman [7 Kan. 50 (1871)]. In this election law decision, Lee historian interested in the development of the law at the writes, Justice David Brewer held that the effect of the Fifteenth state level. Amendment to the U.S. Constitution “worked to strike the word ‘white’ from the Kansas constitutional qualifications that limited Reviewed by M. H. Hoeflich, John H. and John M. Kane suffrage to ‘every white male person’” (p. 43). In highlighting Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Reviews 203 The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846–1873 by Ronald D. Parks xv + 317 pages, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, cloth $34.95.

Open hostility, cultural miscommunication, greed, avarice, flashes of humanity, and the strength of an often maligned people fill the pages of Ronald D. Parks’s The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846–1873. Parks’s work covers a pivotal twenty-seven years in the development of not only the eventual state of Kansas but also of the Kanza people and their struggles to “exercise political autonomy while maintaining traditional social customs and subsistence strategies” (p. 7). In telling a story of two divergent world views and occasional cooperation, Parks crafts an intricate narrative that places the Kanza front and center in the story of Kansas’s development and in the larger framework of western history during the period in which the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails carried passengers, freight, and the ideals of Manifest For devotees of Kanas history, this 273rd volume from the Destiny from the cultured East to the uncivilized West. For Civilization of the American Indian Series explores Kansas and Parks, the Kanza should not be viewed as victims, and above all the West during a period of rapid change in which American he wants his readers to see the Kanza as human beings. Parks’s Indian and white communities contested one another’s work launches a salvo over the bow of conventional history spaces, resources, and ways of life. In the end, the competition and its interpretations of American Indian peoples, calling for between the two communities resulted in the birth of a state, a “necessary reenvisioning of the Kanza people of that time as the furthering of a frontier mythology and the attempted valued companions in our deeply flawed human journey” (p. 8). hegemonic destruction of the Kanza way of life. Parks’s volume Parks deftly interweaves several threads of historical narrative is an excellent companion to William Unrau’s The Kansa Indians: to show the complexity of the developing Kansas frontier A History of the Wind People, 1673–1873 and Unrau’s collaborative and Kanza–white relations. His source material (government work with Craig Miner, The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of records, newspapers, personal accounts, missionary records, Cultural Revolution. Whereas Unrau covers the broadest expanse transcribed speeches, personal interviews, tribal sources) is vast of Kanza history, Parks focuses on the most traumatic time for and, when interpreted through the Kanza lens, becomes rich with the tribe in its quest to survive and retain its culture and identity. their voice so long ignored by mainstream scholarship. Parks Parks’s focused approach allows the reader to gain a deeper gives the Kanza of the nineteenth century a human, realistic understanding of Kanza history, culture, and will to survive presence in a rapidly changing world as they lost control over despite facing seemingly insurmountable odds. Perhaps Parks’s their connections to their homeland, the natural environment, analysis regarding the mistreatment of the Kanza would have and sacred spaces due to conflict with land-hungry settlers. been emboldened by comparing their relationships to frontier No group is above reproach in his analysis. Neither heroes nor settlers and the United States government to those of other villains surface—only deeply flawed white Americans who tribes removed from Kansas to Indian Territory (i.e., the Osage advanced ethnocentric sentiments of the nineteenth century and Delaware). Such an approach would have given Parks demanding racial purity and conformity to Judeo-Christian additional points of comparison to show the extent to which norms under the banner of progress. Parks implores his readers the Kanza were mistreated and taken advantage of given their to consider the Kanza as human beings replete with goodness, diminished circumstances by the time of their final removal. cruelty, charity, and dignity despite the loss of their lands and From the pen of an author who knows the Kanza and writes way of life. By placing the Kanza at the center of his narrative, engagingly, this book tilts the scale closer to the truth about Parks challenges the reader to set aside conventional historical Indian–white relations in the historic West. views of the pioneer narrative in Kansas history and reassess white settlers, traders, government officials, and religious clergy engaged with the Kanza as players in the process of Indian Reviewed by Michelle M. Martin, adjunct professor of history, removal that devastated the Kanza in the 1870s. Rogers State University, Claremore, Oklahoma.

204 Kansas History The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and Nativism, Second Edition by Walter Nugent xix + 231 pages, notes, index. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, cloth $25.00.

Fifty years ago, a young scholar mined the archival holdings of the Kansas State Historical Society and crafted an account of Kansas Populism that refuted the prevailing claims of the historical profession’s luminaries that the men and women of that state’s late-nineteenth century Farmers’ Alliance and People’s Party harbored a deep and seething hatred for immigrants, Jews, and foreigners. When it appeared in 1963, Walter Nugent’s The Tolerant Populists boldly attacked the accusations by Richard Hofstadter and other historians that the 1890s Populists were nativists Nugent did acknowledge some Anglophobia among the and anti-Semites and that they inspired the twentieth-century Populists. Some of the Populist Anglophobia may be attributed nativism and anti-Semitism most famously expressed by to Irish-American nationalism or sympathy for Irish resistance radio priest Charles Coughlin in the 1930s and Senator Joseph to English landlords. Although the Populists lamented the R. McCarthy in the 1950s. Through its use as a descriptor for increasing amount of Kansas land owned by foreign individuals Coughlin and McCarthy, the word “populism”—with a small who lived elsewhere, syndicates, and corporations, the reformers p—had gained a negative connotation during the mid-twentieth welcomed individual foreign settlers who came to the state. century. Although the original Populists were once seen as With The Tolerant Populists, Nugent was among the earliest democratic and the predecessors of reform, the misuse of the scholars to rehabilitate the Populists’ image—an effort that label contributed to the decline of their reputation—especially continues to the present. The Tolerant Populists is now available following the 1955 appearance of Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform: in a second edition from the University of Chicago Press. The From Bryan to FDR. only changes Nugent made for the new edition are updates In contrast to Hofstadter, The Tolerant Populists revealed that to language and the addition of a new preface in which he the Populists harbored neither racist nor economic opposition acknowledges that, had the first edition appeared a few years toward immigrants. Instead, Nugent found that a significant later, he would have paid more attention to race, class, and number of immigrants lived in Populist counties and that gender. Despite these lingering deficiencies, Nugent writes that members of the Farmers’ Alliance, the precursor of the People’s the second edition is necessary “to underline the misuses and Party, sought the support of their foreign-born neighbors and perversions of the term ‘populism,’ with a small p” (p. xi). In that local, state, and national Alliance leaders emerged from the twenty-first century, Nugent observes, populism is “an all- diverse backgrounds. After political action superseded agrarian purpose put-down” (p. xii). He also objects to using populism to organization, the Populists viewed immigrants as potential voters describe the Tea Party. The Populists sought to use government to and clashed with the nativist American Protective Association, regulate business and alleviate the people’s social and economic even if they experienced a few missteps in their relations with problems. “As statists,” Nugent writes, “the real Populists were immigrants—such as when the nascent People’s Party alienated polar opposites of today’s faux populists, the Tea Party people” Germans with the nomination of former Republican and (p. xi). prohibitionist John F. Willits for governor in 1890. Even though the changes to the new edition are few, While professing a desire for land, money, and transportation The Tolerant Populists remains relevant. Nugent delivers an reform, the Populists, from the beginning, placed special interesting and accessible account of the Populist movement as emphasis on the platform’s financial plank. The discussion of he proves his argument. His writing skill—present even in this the “money question” led some Populists to speak of the “money early work—makes the book a good starting point for anyone power.” A few believed that a conspiracy of Wall Street, English, interested in the Populists—especially in Kansas—regardless and Jewish bankers and members of the American government of whether the reader is interested in the past or current existed to manipulate the currency at the people’s expense. historiographical debates over Populism and its legacy. Those conspiracy-minded Populists spoke of “Rothschild” and “Shylock.” Nugent argued, however, that even the use of those terms failed to indicate widespread anti-Semitism among Reviewed by Jeff Wells, visiting assistant professor of history, the Populists. University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Reviews 205 Cold War Kids: Politics and Childhood in Postwar America, 1945–1960 by Marilyn Irvin Holt ix + 214 pages, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014, cloth $34.95.

For nearly seven decades, the baby boom generation has generated tremendous attention as a demographic and historical phenomenon. During the immediate post–World War II years, a national preoccupation with children and youth heralded notable shifts in American housing, education, child-welfare policies, and health care. In Cold War Kids, historian Marilyn Holt offers a broad lens for surveying this changing landscape, focusing on how the federal government enlarged its activities on behalf of children’s welfare, sometimes in tension with state and local governments, but more often as a welcome resource. Much of the discussion in this volume treads familiar ground. The author opens with portrayals of two postwar White House conferences on children and youth, held in 1950 and in 1960, at which federal, state, and local officials gathered to discuss issues ranging from poverty and juvenile incarceration, to school consolidation trends, to lack of affordable daycare, to television’s portrayals of violence and their effects on children. At these conferences, representatives from federal agencies responded to societal pressures to provide leadership for enacting policies in children’s interests. The most notable change from similar conferences held during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and earlier, the author notes, is that all children’s interests were now paramount, not just the interests of economically disadvantaged children. By focusing on national policies positing that all era concerns with communism, national defense, and democracy. children have rights, Holt offers a convincing argument that This notion is worth exploring, but the book’s scope is so broad many Americans, by the 1950s, had come to embrace child- that the author’s Cold War subtext is uneven and, in some cases, centered notions of family and cultural life that would continue unconvincing. For example, the concluding chapter opens with through the second half of the twentieth century. broad claims from the era that America’s children were “the From the fields of education and health care, Holt cites two country’s next generation of military and citizen soldiers” (p. examples of policies enacted to benefit all American children, 147) but ignores nuances of American political and cultural signaling unprecedented federal attention to the nation’s dissent, even in the supposedly conformist era of the 1950s. youngest citizens. In 1955 Congress authorized free polio Despite these flaws, the book offers an intriguing glimpse into vaccinations to all American children and teens. Reacting to the histories of midcentury federal policies affecting children, the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, the U.S. government including thousands of newly arriving “displaced persons” from funded educational programs intended to jump-start science, European countries beginning in 1948, and children of Spanish- math, and engineering curricula in 1958. Although policymakers speaking migrant farm workers throughout the postwar years. had to guard against propagandistic claims that universal Although this study is national in scope, it relies on source child vaccinations and mandatory science education signaled material of particular interest to readers of Kansas History. To a move toward “socialized medicine” and undermined school illustrate her argument that “this period was a turning point systems that had typically relied on local oversight and parental for greater government involvement” (p. 10), Holt draws on involvement, these two developments represented a new and documents and photographs housed at the Harry S. Truman relatively uncontroversial shift of policy-making, perceived Library, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, and the Kansas State widely as benefiting the nation as a whole. Historical Society. By the 1950s, American children were regarded as “national resources” (p. 158). Holt tries to link the federal government’s Reviewed by Rachel Waltner Goossen, professor of history, attention in the late 1940s and early 1950s to broader Cold War– Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas.

206 Kansas History BOOK NOTES

South Pass: Gateway to a Continent. By Will Bagley. (Norman: The Great Plains Guide to Buffalo Bill: Forts, Fights & Other Sites. By University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, 325 pages, cloth $29.95.) Jeff Barnes. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2014, xiii + 240 The South Pass, “a twenty-mile wide, sagebrush-covered plain in pages, paper $19.95.) central Wyoming,” is naturally uninspiring and lacks any historic This exploration of Buffalo Bill Cody’s life retraces his adventures buildings, according to prolific author Will Bagley. However, through the Midwest, unearthing colorful characters, tall tales, and Bagley highlights how this unassuming piece of land was almost dubious claims along the way. Independent historian Jeff Barnes solely responsible for the rapid settlement of the American West (p. acts as tour guide, docent, and storyteller throughout the volume, 21). The South Pass, he explains, was the only place in the Rockies keeping his prose lively with an eclectic mix of history and myth. where wheeled vehicles could tread with relative ease, making Readers will learn about not only the legendary Cody but also it the only logical pass for the Oregon, California, and Mormon his rivalry with General Custer, the history of Leavenworth’s first trails, the Pony Express route, and the first transcontinental cemetery, and the heartwarming story of the “original” Buffalo telegraph line. Bagley traces the history of South Pass from its Bill. Barnes leaves the reader well-equipped to visit the many discovery by white settlers to its use by fur traders, missionaries, historical sites highlighted in the book, always providing succinct gold seekers, mail carriers, and, of course, migrants. Drawing descriptions, up-to-date directions, information about related sites, on numerous contemporary accounts, South Pass integrates the and recommendations for further reading. Whether recounting fascinating accounts of famous and not-so-famous travelers with the legends of Buffalo Bill or debunking them, this guide offers environmental history. Bagley reminds us that natural landscapes, a sensible and entertaining approach to discovering Great Plains often taken for granted, sometimes play pivotal roles in shaping history. the course of history. Kansas Fishes. By Kansas Fishes Committee. (Lawrence: University Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Press of Kansas, 2014, xxiii + 518 pages, cloth $39.95.) Greatest Escape. By Mark Lee Gardner. (New York: Harper Collins, The Kansas Fishes Committee has brought together over fifty 2013, x + 309 pages, paper $15.99.) authors to create a comprehensive guide to the diverse fishes of Although staged hundreds of miles from the Kansas–Missouri Kansas. The first handbook of its kind published since 1995, it offers border, where the James-Younger gang shot and robbed its way to updated information on over 160 species of fish native to Kansas infamy and celebrity, the Northfield, Minnesota, raid of September streams and adjoining waterways. The authors have designed 7, 1876, is an inextricable part of the legend of these most notorious the guide to appeal to general enthusiasts as well as specialists western outlaws: Frank and Jesse James; and Cole, Bob, and Jim by adding introductions to fish anatomy and physiology as well Younger. In Shot All to Hell, historian Mark Gardner, an authority as Kansas’s rivers. Each species entry includes a color drawing on the American West and author of To Hell on a Fast Horse and and descriptions of the fish’s habitat, reproduction cycles, and other stories of the “Wild West,” offers a carefully researched and feeding habits. Yet this book is more than merely a spotter’s guide. detailed account of the Minnesota bank robbery and shoot-out. Kansas Fishes also presents the story of an ecosystem harmed by His “efforts to uncover the true story of the raid and its aftermath” late nineteenth-century farming practices and post–World War led “to new discoveries—and new answers to old questions” (p. II irrigation projects. By chronicling the disappearance of some 2), which should be of interest to many students of Kansas and species and the introduction of new ones to the region, the project western history. organizers emphasize the importance of conservation to Kansas’s environment. Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future. By Robert Wuthnow. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, xx Making Rocky Mountain National Park: The Environmental History of a + 498 pages, cloth $35.00.) National Treasure. By Jerry J. Frank. (Lawrence: University Press of In this study, Princeton University social scientist Robert Kansas, 2014, xiv + 253 pages, cloth $34.95.) Wuthnow, who has focused much of his scholarly attention of late This well-researched, engaging, and visitor center–worthy on the Midwest and Kansas in particular—Remaking the Heartland: study traces the first century of Rocky Mountain National Park. Middle America since the 1950s (2011) and Red State Religion: Faith and After reviewing the expected local boosters, conservationists, and Politics in America’s Heartland (2012)—profiles eleven small towns federal officials who pushed for the iconic park’s creation in 1915— across the United States, including Ellis, Kansas, and Lexington, not coincidentally, Congress created the National Park Service the Nebraska. Wuthnow uses material from these communities and next year—historian Jerry Frank concentrates on the evolving many others, as well as several hundred interviews, to provide tensions between the two animating forces that have continually “an account of how the residents of America’s small towns find remade the park: tourism and ecology. (Automobiles were essential community, what it means to them, and why it is important” to increasing visitation, for example, but the infrastructure (p. xiii). In many respects, small-town America is much like the surrounding them degraded the park; elk herds satisfied tourists’ nation’s urban and suburban areas; it is important “to understand definitions about what a national park should offer but became small-town life for what it is, with all its attractions and limitations, seriously overpopulated.) Refreshingly, the author proceeds but not to imagine that it is the solution to the problems of the thematically rather than chronologically, devoting a cleverly titled larger society” (p. xvi). chapter each to cars, trails, trees, elk, fish, and ski slopes.

Book Notes 207 Department of History KHistoricalansas Foundation

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains is published across the state, and publications and web-based resources quarterly through a partnership between the Kansas accessible everywhere. The Department of History at Historical Foundation and the Department of History at Kansas State University is especially well suited to the Kansas State University. The Kansas Historical Foundation study of Kansas, agricultural, and environmental history. serves as a fund raising, fund management, membership, As a Land Grant school whose culture and economy have and retail organization to support and promote the Kansas historically been shaped by the economy in the state, the Historical Society, a state agency that safeguards and shares history of Kansas holds a venerable place in the academic the state's history through the collection, preservation, offerings of the University. Environmental History, with a and interpretation of its past. The Society's collections and particular focus on agricultural, water, and grassland issues programs are diverse and are made available through its in Kansas, has become increasingly more important to library and museum in Topeka, historic sites and classrooms university research and curricula worldwide.

The journal is available as one of many benefits of membership with the Kansas Historical Foundation. Find more information online at kshs.org/11413.

The journal publishes scholarly articles, edited documents, and Kansas History follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition other materials that contribute to an understanding of the history (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). A style sheet, which and cultural heritage of Kansas and the central plains. Political, includes a detailed explanation of the journal’s editorial policy, is social, intellectual, cultural, economic, and institutional histories available at kshs.org/12447. Articles appearing in Kansas History are welcome, as are biographical and historiographical interpreta- are available online at the Kansas Historical Society’s website tions and studies of archaeology, the built environment, and material (kshs.org/12445) and from EBSCO Publishing. They are available culture. Articles emphasizing visual documentation, exceptional on microfilm from ProQuest Microfilms. reminiscences, and autobiographical writings are also considered The Edgar Langsdorf Award for Excellence in Writing, which for publication. Genealogical studies are generally not accepted. includes a plaque and an honorarium of two hundred dollars, is Manuscripts are evaluated anonymously by scholars who awarded each year for the best article published in Kansas History. determine their suitability for publication based on originality, The editors welcome letters responding to any of the articles quality of research, significance, and presentation, among other published in the journal. With the correspondent’s permission, factors. Previously published articles or manuscripts that are those that contribute substantively to the scholarly dialogue by being considered for publication elsewhere will not be considered. offering new insights or historical information may be published. The editors reserve the right to make changes in accepted articles All comments or editorial queries should be addressed to the and will consult with the authors regarding such. The publishers editors, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, Department assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion made of History, 208 Eisenhower Hall, Kansas State University, by contributors. Manhattan, KS 66506-1002; 785-532-6730; email: KHJournal@ k-state.edu

Illustrations appearing in the journal, unless otherwise noted, for purchase. Please contact the State Archives Division for order- are from the collections of the Kansas Historical Society. Re- ing information: kshs.org/14154; 785-272-8681, ext. 321. productions of images from the Society’s collections are available

Kansas History (USPS 290 620) is published quarterly by the Kansas Historical Foundation, 6425 SW 6th Avenue, Topeka, KS 66615-1099 (kshs.org), officially the Kansas State Historical Society, Inc., an IRS determined 501(c)(3) non-profit. It is distributed to members of the Kansas Historical Foundation. Annual membership rates are $30 for students, $40 for individuals, $50 for organizations, $60 for households, and $70 for international. Single issues are $7. Contact Vicky Henley, executive director and CEO, Kansas Historical Foundation, at 785-272-8681, ext. 201, for more information. Periodicals postage paid at Topeka, Kansas, and additional mailing office in Lawrence, Kansas. Postmaster: Send address changes to Kansas History, 6425 SW 6th Avenue, Topeka, KS 66615-1099.

Department of History KHistoricalansas Foundation